Projects
Turaath Tech builds on a foundation of work developed over several years, including independent research, digital tools, and collaborations in cultural heritage and governance. Our current projects span museum innovation, education, policy, and historical research.
RITHMS (2022-2025) brings together a Consortium of EU tech institutes, researchers, and law enforcement officers to develop a platform to track and tackle cultural goods trafficking using social network analysis (SNA). Our involvement in this project began in 2023 through our founder's role as Collaborator with IIT, evolving in 2025 with the contracting of Leeson Consulting to continue development of a data collection, cleaning, and mining pipeline. Research and development have focused on the analysis of open data, offering new opportunities for both researchers and law enforcement.
Initial research included an SNA study of sanctioned actors involved in the circulation of cultural goods in Russia and Ukraine, published in 2024
The project's multi-step process of data collection and processing has produced the largest known non-police dataset of looted, stolen, and unprovenanced cultural goods
Education
Working with the Save Cultural Heritage Group, we prepared a free online course titled "Cultural Governance in the Modern Middle East." The course offered a general introduction to the modern history of heritage management in the Middle East, focusing on the 19th and 20th centuries. Course material explored how heritage and culture have been leveraged for political legitimacy by various individuals, institutions, and governments both in the Middle East and abroad. Assigned readings considered local claims to authority that competed with Europe and the United States in the region and the implications for heritage management in a broader context of development. Case studies were used as vehicles to explore broader theoretical concepts such as conflict, identity, nationalism, and decolonisation.
Heritage and Legitimacy:
Cultural Governance in Modern Iraq
This recent book (Springer, 2025) explores the ways in which cultural heritage has impacted policy and communal relations in 20th century Iraq (and how policy and communal relations, in turn, have impacted policy). Major themes explored in the book include:
-
Cultural Governance as a Political Arena. The book details how Iraq's cultural heritage and institutions were leveraged by state, international, local, and colonial actors to assert legitimacy and wield political influence from the late Ottoman period to the authoritarian regimes of the late century
-
Heritage as a Tool of Domination and Resistance. It shows how elite control over antiquities, religious sites, and archives has worked towards both the suppression and empowerment of identity, as communities and individuals contested official narratives and shaped cultural policies from the ground up
-
Decolonising Knowledge and Sources. It critiques reliance on official archives, advocating decolonised approaches that prioritise local voices, microhistories, and a more critical understanding of Iraq's past
Aeschylus Museum
Although it's widely recognised that the values of performative heritage are intangible, this has not, unfortunately, affected the ways in which theatre heritage is appreciated in museums. The Aeschylus Museum, proposed for the site of the Palaio Elaiourgeiou in Elefsina, Greece, offered collections-free programming to promote the plays of the ancient tragedian Aeschylus (525-456 BCE), born in the town. A combination of performances, digital programming, and hands-on workshops sought to engage more deeply with visitors’ lives, relating material in a way that does not simply valorise quarantined material remains. Research published on the approach outline the more specific concerns of establishing a museum with this proposed pedagogical approach. Semi-structured interviews with the local community, benchmark analyses of similar institutions, and values assessments of the community and plays contributed to an analysis of how the museum could meet local expectations and promote meaningful experiences.
Though the project was put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic and later cancelled due to financial restructuring, the findings and development process laid valuable groundwork and insights for future initiatives in this field.
Save Carthage
In foundational work (conducted outside the auspices of Turaath Tech but exemplifying our focus on archival research and heritage protection), Luke & Leeson (2023) and Leeson & Luke (2025) offer compelling, historically grounded analyses of the 1970s UNESCO‑UNDP “Save Carthage” initiative, showing how American-led archaeological efforts, while well-intentioned, clashed with Tunisian authorities and struggled to integrate into the country’s postcolonial framework
The campaign manifested tensions in international heritage interventions and highlights the political role of archaeology within development aid. An examination of post-conflict reconstruction of historical narrative through a postcolonial lens considers how heritage restoration efforts navigated local politics, national identity, and global cultural governance. Together, these studies demonstrate a commitment to understanding Tunisia’s heritage through critical, multi-scalar research, with a particular focus on how international partnerships, colonial legacies, and institutional dynamics have shaped heritage management in the region.
The Online Illicit Antiquities Trade
At Turaath Tech, we actively monitor and engage with online communities to combat the illicit antiquities market. Drawing on our in-depth analysis and real-time moderation of Reddit, where artifacts (including high-risk goods from the Middle East and North Africa) are traded or appraised without proper provenance, we advocate for strict guidelines to prevent the circulation of unprovenanced items. Our work contributes to broader efforts, such as those by the ATHAR Project, that have exposed trafficking networks on platforms like Facebook. By combining platform-level moderation with policy advice based on deep heritage expertise, we help ensure that online communities uphold ethical standards and limit the demand for trafficked cultural heritage.