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Most analysis of the international flows of the illicit art market has described a global situation in which a postcolonial legacy of acquisition and collection exploits cultural heritage by pulling it westwards towards major international trade nodes in the USA and Europe. As the locus of consumptive global economic power shifts, however, these traditional flows are pulled in other directions: notably for the present commentary, towards and within Asia.

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As part of a project on the trafficking of parrots and antiquities in Indonesia, we organized a conference titled "Ethics of online research into illicit trade of cultural and natural resources" in August 2021. Two of the major themes that came out of this conference were (1) the difference in ethical approval requirements for research into these sensitive topics and (2) the overall lack of mental health support for researchers focusing on these topics. In this short commentary, we will reflect on both themes, using our own experiences as examples.Researching the trade and trafficking of natural resources is sensitive research, as it "potentially poses a substantial threat to those who are or have been involved in it" (Lee, 1993, p. 4). Lee and Renzetti (1993, p. 6) classify research as likely to be threatening in four areas: "(a) where research intrudes into the private sphere or delves into some deeply personal experience; (b) where the study is concerned with deviance or social control; (c) where the study impinges on the vested interests of powerful persons or the exercise of coercion or domination; or (d) where the research deals with things that are sacred to those being studied that they do not wish profaned." Arguably, researching the trade and trafficking of natural resources, such as wildlife crime, environmental crime, trafficking of natural commodities, unregulated and unreported fishing, factory farming, human-wildlife conflict, to name a fewThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.