Cristiana Panella (Ph.D., Leiden University) is a Senior Researcher in social anthropology at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren. Since 1991, her research has focused upon the illegal trade in African antiquities and international rhetoric on cultural heritage. Her current research orients on informal/illegal transnational trades driven by African migrants in Italy in relation to value chains, materiality/corporality, Beauty and political production of illegality. Her recent publications include: “Illegality” (Panella and Thomas eds. 2015, Critique of Anthropology),“‘Looters or Heroes?  Production of illegality and memories of ‘looting’ in Mali”, European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 2014; Lives in motion, indeed. Interdisciplinary perspectives on Social Change in Honour of Danielle de Lame (edited book, 2012); Panella (ed.) 2012, “Central Peripheries and Contexts on the Verge. Absence and Marginality as spaces of emergence”, Africa Today. 2012 ; « Le patrimoine culturel des autres. Conditionnalités, néotraditionalisme et création de l’illicéité au Mali ». In de Lame and Mazzocchetti (eds.), 2012.