Madison Suzanne Leeson

Madison is a postdoctoral researcher in Digital Humanities, Trafficking of Cultural Heritage, at IIT-Centre for Cultural Heritage Technology. She is a historian and researcher of historical heritage management specializing in the modern Middle East and currently based in Venice, Italy. Areas of focus include the illicit antiquities trade, digitization and integration of new technologies, decolonization, and the use of material culture in the consolidation of identity and legitimacy. She received her PhD from Koç University (2022) in Istanbul, Türkiye, with a dissertation on the ways in which cultural heritage were leveraged for political legitimacy in 20th-century Iraq.