Speakers at 2nd Expert Meeting on Open Journalism

Yaman Akdeniz is a professor of Law at the Human Rights Law Research Center, Faculty of Law and the Pro Rector for the Istanbul Bilgi University. He has served as an expert on human rights aspects of Internet law and policy for several international organizations including the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) Office and the Office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. More recently, he was appointed to the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on Rights of Internet Users as an 'elected independent expert' and to the Council of Europe’s Committee of experts on cross-border flow of Internet traffic and Internet freedom as an 'elected independent expert'. His list of published works include Internet Child Pornography and the Law: National and International Responses (London: Ashgate, 2008); and Racism on the Internet (Council of Europe Publishing, 2010) as well as a number of reports for international organizations on freedom of expression- and media pluralism- related issues.

Gill Phillips is the Director of Editorial Legal Services for the Guardian News & Media and a media law specialist. She advises on a range of content-related matters including defamation, privacy, contempt of court and reporting restrictions. She has worked as an in-house lawyer dealing with pre- and post- publication review and litigation matters for the BBC, News Group Newspapers and Times Newspapers Limited where she was also Head of Litigation. Since 2009 she has advised Guardian News & Media on its ground-breaking coverage of major issues pertaining to the freedom of information in recent years, including phone-hacking, Wikileaks, the Leveson Inquiry and most recently the NSA leaks from Edward Snowden. She was a member of the Ministry of Justice’s Working Group on Libel Reform. She also sits as a part-time Employment Tribunal Judge and co-authors the College of Law Employment Law handbook.

Tarlach McGonagle is a senior researcher at the Institute for Information Law (IViR), Faculty of Law, University of Amsterdam and at the School of Human Rights Research in the Netherlands. He regularly writes expert reports for various branches of the Council of Europe, OSCE, other IGOs and NGOs. He is currently Rapporteur of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on protection of journalism and safety of journalists. He 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. McGonagle is coordinator of IViR’s specialised masters programme, Informatierecht, at the University of Amsterdam. In Spring 2013, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania and at the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy and Law (RIIPL), Rutgers School of Law-Camden, New Jersey.