The Rutgers Institute for Information Policy and Law (RIIPL) welcomes its first visiting RIIPL Fellow, Dr. Tarlach McGonagle from the University of Amsterdam.

Dr. Tarlach McGonagle specializes in a broad range of topics relating to international and European human rights law, especially the rights to freedom of expression and religion; minority rights; participatory rights, and cultural and linguistic rights. His other main area of expertise is international, European and comparative media law and policy. Themes such as pluralism, diversity, tolerance and “hate speech” have a central place in his research.

Dr. McGonagle was awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Amsterdam (2008) for his thesis examining the interface between freedom of expression and minority rights under international law. He also holds an LL.M. degree in International Human Rights Law (University of Essex, 2001) and a B.A. International in Law and French (National University of Ireland, Galway, 1998).

He regularly writes expert reports for various branches of the Council of Europe, OSCE and other IGOs and NGOs. He was an invited expert speaker at the Thematic Discussion on “Racist Hate Speech” organized by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in 2012.

He is an associate member of the (Netherlands) School of Human Rights Research. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the European Audiovisual Observatory. He is Coordinator of IViR’s specialized masters program, Informatierecht, and he coordinates and lectures on a number of the program’s compulsory and elective modules, and is the program’s dissertations coordinator.