Join us on Thursday 4 November 2021 at 11 am Pacific on twitch.tv/globalgamejam for a live AMA session with Dr. Catherine P. Foster Program Director, Cultural Antiquities Task Force Foreign Affairs Research Analyst, Cultural Heritage Center U.S. Department of State. Get answers to all of your questions about the CATF and their involvement and hopes for outcomes from the Cultural Heritage Game Jam. We will take questions from Twitch chat and Dr. Foster will answer them to the best of her ability to help prepare you and your team for the game jam.

The CATF comprises multiple federal agencies that share a common mission to disrupt cultural property trafficking in the United States and abroad.  She also administers several international agreements with countries in the Middle East and North Africa for protecting cultural property against looting and trafficking.

Prior to joining the Department as a civil servant in 2011, Dr. Foster contracted as its Associate Coordinator for Iraqi Cultural Heritage.  Previously, she served for seven years as the Associate Curator of the Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology and as an Archaeology Specialist for California State Parks.  For ten years, Dr. Foster conducted archaeological excavations at several historic and prehistoric sites in Jordan, Turkey, and the United States.  She has published an edited volume on household archaeology, a catalog of art and antiquities returned to Italy by the United States since 2001, and several scholarly articles.

She has a doctorate in Near Eastern Studies from the University of California at Berkeley, with a specialty in the art and archaeology of the ancient Near East, and a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from the University of California, San Diego.