Alexander Herman | Director

Alexander Herman is the Director of the Institute of Art and Law. He has written, taught and presented on an array of topics in relation to art, law and cultural property. His writing appears regularly in The Art Newspaper and he has been quoted widely in the press on art law topics (including in The Guardian, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Telegraph, ArtNET, The Financial Times and The Globe & Mail). His books include Restitution: The Return of Cultural Artefacts (Lund Humphries, 2021) and The Parthenon Marbles Dispute: Heritage, Law, Politics (Hart Publishing, 2023). His work has also been cited in the UK House of Lords and in an amicus curiae brief before the US Supreme Court. He trained in both common law and civil law legal systems at McGill University and practised law in Montreal, Canada. He is Programme Co-Director of the Art, Business and Law LLM and is a frequent contributor to the IAL blog. Find him on X @artlawalex and LinkedIn.

Emily Gould | Assistant Director

Emily Gould is Assistant Director of the Institute of Art and Law. She writes, teaches and presents on a range of areas pertaining to art and cultural heritage law including copyright, heritage crime, museum ethics and contracts. She teaches and convenes on the Art, Business and Law LLM at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London and is a frequent contributor to the IAL blog. Emily practised as a lawyer both in private practice and in-house, and has also worked in the charity sector in fundraising and grants management in a range of sectors. Her association with the IAL goes back to 1997, when she worked in the organisation’s first office in Leicester. In April 2023, she was an expert witness on NFTs before the UK House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport.

Ruth Redmond-Cooper | Head of Publications

Ruth Redmond-Cooper founded the Institute of Art and Law with Professor Norman Palmer in 1995 and now acts as a consultant to the IAL and Editor of the quarterly journal Art Antiquity and Law. She holds degrees in law from the Universities of Kent, Bristol and Paris-Sud and has lectured at several universities, including Leicester, Nottingham, Tasmania, Dokkyo (Japan), Paris-Sud and Essex. Ruth has written articles and presented papers at conferences on a range of art-law areas. She is happy to discuss book publishing proposals with potential authors.

Geoffrey Bennett | Senior Fellow

Geoffrey Bennett is a Senior Fellow of the Institute of Art and Law. After studying Classics and Law at Cambridge he was called to the Bar and has held university posts at Liverpool, Leeds, Louisville, City London and Notre Dame. He has also practised and teaches and writes in the area of cultural heritage law. He is a Visiting Professor at Queen Mary University of London, where he teaches on the Art, Business and Law LLM.

Jo Crabtree | Accounts and Office Manager

Jo Crabtree is Accounts and Office Manager at the IAL, where she has worked since 2012. After working in business administration in healthcare in London for 10 years, she is now based in Mid-Wales. In addition to the finance side, Jo also manages the administration of events and courses at the IAL. She has backpacked extensively around the world from Suriname to Belarus and beyond. In her spare time, she has turned her hand to plastering and plumbing on a large environmentally-friendly barn conversion project in Wales.

Rebecca Hawkes-Reynolds | Assistant Researcher

Dr Rebecca Hawkes-Reynolds is an Assistant Researcher at the Institute of Art and Law. She studied archaeology and art history at the University of Nottingham and attained a PhD in archaeology in 2015. She then trained in law and was called to the Bar of England and Wales by The Honourable Society of Middle Temple in 2016. She has assisted the Institute in teaching at study days on various aspects of art law since 2017 and is a regular contributor to the Institute’s art law blog. She has a particular interest in planning and the historic environment as well as exploring how heritage protection can be disseminated to the public and all concerned. The odd assemblage of archaeological fish bones still captures her interest.

Kiri Cragin-Folwell | Marketing Consultant

Kiri Cragin-Folwell is a Marketing Consultant for the Institute of Art and Law. Since graduating with a masters from Christie’s Education (London) in Modern and Contemporary Art History, she has worked on marketing teams at leading art galleries, auction houses and educational institutions, including Queen Mary University of London. Kiri assists the Institute with social media strategy, content development and data analytics reporting.

IN MEMORIAM – Professor Norman Palmer QC CBE

Professor Norman Palmer QC, CBE was Academic Principal of the Institute of Art and Law until he passed away in October 2016. He was a practising barrister with an international practice in all areas of the law relating to art and antiquities. He was Chair of the Treasure Valuation Committee, of the Illicit Trade Advisory Panel and of the Working Group on Human Remains, and a longstanding member of the Spoliation Advisory Panel. He represented the United Kingdom on international committees responsible for developing principles governing cross-border transactions in cultural property, and he advised governments across the world on cultural property law. He was the author of Museums and the Holocaust (1st edition) and of Palmer on Bailment (3rd edition), as well as numerous articles in a wide range of academic and practitioner periodicals. He remains sorely missed. For more, see here.