Mathias Desmet

Mathias Desmet is an academic assistant and PhD researcher at the Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and Social Law at Ghent University. He provides assistance for the following courses: ‘criminology’, ‘private security and police studies’ and ‘historical criminology’. As a PhD student he is conducting research concerning art crime and more specifically art theft, plunder and looting of archeological sites and illegal trafficking of art, antiquities and cultural goods. 

Mathias also has a distinct interest in intelligence studies. For his master’s thesis he wrote about espionage in Belgian penal law. He is a board member of the Belgian Intelligence Studies Center (BISC) and editor of the Cahiers Inlichtingenstudies/Cahiers d’études du renseignement.