United Kingdom

Brief description of the legal entity

The University of Edinburgh was founded in 1583, making it one of Scotland’s ancient universities. More than 23,000 students from all over the world, and from many different backgrounds, study at the University of Edinburgh, which is both the largest university in Scotland and one of the most multi-cultural. The University thrives on its reputation for excellence and innovation and takes pride in maintaining its key position at the forefront of research, and advancements in teaching. The Law School is part of the College of Humanities and Social Science. Research is central to the Law School’s activities, with staff actively engaged in research across a wide range of legal and socio-legal areas.

Short profile of the team members

Rachael Craufurd Smith, the scientist in charge of the research team of the University of Edinburgh, is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. Before becoming an academic, she gained considerable experience working both in private legal practice and as an adviser on media law and policy for the BBC. She teaches media law at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and supervises a range of PhD research students working in the media field. Rachael Craufurd Smith has written widely on the impact of constitutional guarantees, fundamental rights, and international and domestic laws on media pluralism and diversity. More recently, her research has focused on the impact of convergence on established domestic regulatory regimes and the evolving relationship between individuals and the mass media. She has organised a number of international workshops on media pluralism, the impact of digitisation on film production and exploitation, trust in the media and European Union law and culture. She is a member of the Europa Institute and Co-director of the AHRC Script Centre, based in the School of Law. She is also an editor of The Journal of Media Law, launched by Hart Publishing in 2009 to provide scholarly and critical analysis of media law developments.

Title: Dr.
Position: Senior Lecturer in EU Law
Tel: +44 131 650 2061
Fax: +44 131 650 6317
E-mail: r.c.smith@ed.ac.uk

Address: School of Law
University of Edinburgh
Old College
South Bridge
Edinburgh EH8 9YL
United Kingdom

Yolande Stolte graduated with an LLB degree in 2007 from the University of Leiden (the Netherlands) and obtained an LLM in Civil Law from the same university in 2008. She was awarded the VSB foundation scholarship to further specialise in her main field of interest: IP and Media Law. She used this to obtain an LLM in Innovation, Technology and the Law at the University of Edinburgh, writing a dissertation on ‘The impartiality requirement in the UK: Television news reporting in the 21st Century’. After graduating in 2009 she has worked as a Research Assistant on several projects in the field of IP and Media Law at the University of Edinburgh and is currently an editor for the online legal journal ‘SCRIPTed’.

E-mail: ystolte@yahoo.com