The Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA) was founded in 2009 by Noah Charney as an international, nongovernmental organization that works to promote scholarly research in the study of art crime and cultural heritage protection. The first organization of its type, ARCA seeks to identify emerging and under-examined trends related to the study of art crime and to develop strategies that advocate for the responsible stewardship of our collective artistic and archaeological heritage. It aims to bridge the gap between the practical and theoretical by fostering collaboration among all diverse and relevant entities: foreign and domestic law enforcement officials, security consultants, academics, lawyers, archaeologists, insurance specialists, criminologists, art historians, conservators, and other parties who wish to learn the surprising and interesting ways that different professions overlap with, or are impacted by, art and heritage crime. At the most basic level, ARCA seeks to identify emerging and under-examined trends related to art crime. ARCA advances its mission through its professional development training programmes, its research, publications, capacity building, and public outreach. As an interdisciplinary group, ARCA works with scholars and allied professionals in the fields of law, criminal justice, security, museum studies, art history, archaeology, and cultural resource management at the local, national, and international level in order to foster an exchange of knowledge and the advancement of this specialised field.ARCA is the go-to research group in the field, featured in The New York Times, National Geographic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, an Amazon Prime documentary, leading an influencer campaign for Samsung, and even making an appearance in Dan Brown’s novel, Inferno.Similarly, ARCA works to improve the collective relationship with the past by leveraging the knowledge and influence of professionals, patrons, and the public in protecting the world's common artistic patrimony. It also produces the Journal of Art Crime, an interdisciplinary and international, peer-reviewed journal of scholarly work in art crime research that is published twice a year.This book series, a collaboration between ARCA and Rowman & Littlefield, seeks to establish the publishing series of record for scholarship on the multidisciplinary field of art crime.For more information about ARCA, see https://artcrimeresearch.org/.

Series Editor: Noah Charney