Prof. dr. T. McGonagle

Dr. Tarlach McGonagle is an associate professor at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at Amsterdam Law School, and Professor of Media Law & Information Society at Leiden Law School (a part-time chair financed by the Leiden University Fund).

Tarlach specialises in a broad range of topics relating to European and international human rights law, especially the right to freedom of expression; minority rights; participatory rights, the right to equality/non-discrimination, cultural and linguistic rights, epistemic rights and the right of access to information. His other main area of expertise is European, international and comparative media law and policy. Themes such as media freedom and pluralism, diversity, tolerance, “hate speech”, disinformation, platform regulation, safety of journalists, and the transformation of public debate, have a central place in his research.

Tarlach regularly advises and conducts studies and expert drafting work for the Council of Europe, the OSCE and other intergovernmental organisations. Between 2014 and 2024, he served on successive Council of Europe committees of experts that drafted five recommendations which were adopted by the organisation’s Committee of Ministers and addressed to all member States. He was co-rapporteur of both the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on SLAPPs (2022-2023) and its Committee of Experts on combating hate speech (2020-2021), having previously served as a member of the Committee of Experts on quality journalism in the digital age (2018-2019). He earlier served as rapporteur of both the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on media pluralism and transparency of media ownership (2016-2017) and its Committee of Experts on protection of journalism and safety of journalists (2014-15).

He was principal drafter of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities’ Tallinn Guidelines on National Minorities and the Media in the Digital Age (2019). He was an invited expert speaker at the United Nations Forum on Minority Issues on “Hate speech, social media and minorities” in 2020 and at the Thematic Discussion on “Racist Hate Speech” organised by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in 2012. He was one of the independent experts involved in the drafting - at the invitation of the OSCE HCNM - of a set of international Guidelines on the use of Minority Languages in the Broadcast Media (2003).

Tarlach is a senior researcher at the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research and is co-chair of its Working Group on human rights in the digital age. He is a member of: the Euromedia Research Group; the Editorial Board of the European Audiovisual Observatory; the Editorial Board of Netherlands Human Rights Quarterly; the Board of the Vereniging voor Media- en Communicatierecht; the Meijers Committee - Standing Committee of Experts on International Migration, Refugee and Criminal Law; and the Advisory Council on International Affairs – Human Rights Committee.

Tarlach has served as Director of the Informatierecht (Information Law) LL.M. Programme (2019-2024) and has developed, coordinated and lectured on a number of the programme’s courses over the years. Currently, his main course on the programme is International Media Law, Policy & Practice, which has a strong experiential learning component and is part of the Amsterdam Law Practice programme. At Leiden University, he is Programme Director of the Advanced LL.M. in European and International Human Rights Law. He coordinates and lectures on the courses: Mediarecht en Informatiesamenleving (masteropleiding Staats- en bestuursrecht) and European Human Rights Law and Non-Discrimination Law (Advanced LL.M. in European and International Human Rights Law).

In 2020, he obtained his Senior Teaching Qualification (STQ; Senior Kwalificatie Onderwijs (SKO) and was awarded a Comenius Teaching Fellowship. He was voted Amsterdam Law School Lecturer of the Year for 2018.

Tarlach 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).

Before joining the University of Amsterdam, Tarlach worked as a journalist for the national Irish language weekly newspaper, Foinse, as a consultant for the NGO, ARTICLE 19, and as a lecturer/language teacher (English and Irish) at Université Lille 3 Charles de Gaulle.