[2] Her MPhil thesis documented the sale of looted South American antiquities in auctions in the United States,[3] and her dissertation covered the sociology of archaeology and heritage in Bolivia.
[6] After earning her doctoral degree, Yates joined the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research at the University of Glasgow.
[2] From 2012 to 2015, Yates held a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship and a Core Fulbright Award to study the trafficking of Latin American antiquities.
[2] Her grant project used fieldwork in Bolivia, Belize, and Mexico to analyze relationships between communities, governments, the law, and transnational criminal organizations to study the effectiveness of regulatory mechanisms for controlling the illicit antiquities trade.
Her more recent book, with Cara Tremain, is an edited collection of essays:The Market for Mesoamerica: Reflections on the Sale of Pre-Columbian Antiquities.