Professor Lesley McAra

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Emeritus Professor of Penology

CBE FRSE MA PhD

Tel: +44 (0)131 650 2036

Email: Lesley.McAra@ed.ac.uk

View my publications

Lesley McAra is an alumna of the University of Edinburgh and of the Open University. She began her career as a researcher in the Scottish Office where she led a major programme of research evaluating social work criminal justice services. In 1995, she joined the University of Edinburgh as Lecturer in Criminology, was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2005, and to the Chair of Penology in 2009. Her inaugural lecture can be listened to here.

Lesley is currently the Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH). She is also Assistant Principal Community Relations -  academic lead for the local impact  component of University of Edinburgh strategy.

Lesley was the inaugural Director of the Edinburgh Futures Institute, a new cross-University initiative committed to radical forms of inter-disciplinarity (bringing together the arts, humanities and social sciences with data science, engineering, the natural sciences and medicine), co-design and coproduction (empowering and working in partnership with communities, as well as collaborating with industry and governments), and data driven innovation.

A former Dean of the School of Law, Lesley was the first woman to be appointed to that post. In 2014 she founded (with alumna, Karina McTeague) the Leadership Foundation for Women in Law. She was also the founder of the Empirical Legal Research Network, a cross-University forum aimed at facilitating partnership-working across different disciplines, pooling expertise and functioning as a resource bank for researchers at all levels of career

In 2018, Lesley was elected as President of the European Society of Criminology and, following her term of office, she continued to play a major role in the Society as part of its Executive Board (in 2021) and as a member of the working groups on Juvenile Justice and Crime, Criminal Justice and the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Lesley’s research interests lie in the general areas of the sociology of punishment and the sociology of law and deviance. Particular interests include: youth crime and juvenile justice; gender justice and community well-being; the politics of crime control; and comparative criminal justice. She is Co-Director (with Susan McVie) of the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, a prize-winning longitudinal programme of research on pathways into and out of offending for a cohort of around 4,300 young people. Funded by grants from the ESRC (R00237157, R000239150), the Nuffield Foundation and the Scottish Government, Study findings have been utilised in penal reform campaigns both nationally and internationally and have formed the principal evidence base for a range of youth justice policies in Scotland, including the ‘Whole System Approach’ and the decision to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility.  Lesley is currently a member of the Scottish Government’s Advisory Group on Anti-social Behaviour and the Community Confidence Group, set up as part of the Scottish Government’s review of the age of criminal responsibility in Scotland. She has also been a member of the Youth Justice Board’s Academic Liaison Network (Ministry of Justice, UK Government). A former Editor-in-Chief (with Ursula Kilkelly) of the journal Youth Justice, Lesley is currently Co-Editor (with Alison Liebling and Shadd Maruna) of the Oxford Handbook of Criminology.

In 2013, Lesley was a joint winner (with Susan McVie) of the Howard League for Penal Reform Research Medal which celebrates high quality research from ‘new thinking’ and ‘radical researchers’ who have changed penal policy and practice. This was followed in 2016 with the Chancellor’s award for research impact which honours colleagues at the University of Edinburgh whose outstanding research has made a demonstrable contribution to society. And in 2019, she was the winner (with Susan McVie) of the ESRC prize for Outstanding Public Policy Impact.  She was awarded a CBE, in the New Year's Honours List 2018, for services to Criminology and elected as Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2021.

Lesley’s previous teaching experience has covered several criminology courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level including the MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice. She welcomes applications from doctoral candidates in any area of her expertise.

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Accessibility Statement

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Accessibility statement for Edinburgh Law School Website 

Website accessibility statement inline with Public Sector Body (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018

This accessibility statement applies to https://www.law.ed.ac.uk/

This website is run by Edinburgh Law School, University of Edinburgh. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this application. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • Using your browser settings, change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • zoom in up to 200% without the text spilling off the screen
  • navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
  • navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of Job Access with Speech (JAWS), NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) and VoiceOver)

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand. However, some of our content is technical, and we use technical terms where there is no easier wording we could use without changing what the text means.

Customising the website

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability. This is an external site with suggestions to make your computer more accessible:

AbilityNet - My Computer My Way

With a few simple steps you can customise the appearance of our website using your browser settings to make it easier to read and navigate:

Additional information on how to customise our website appearance

If you are a member of University staff or a student, you can use the free SensusAccess accessible document conversion service:

Information on SensusAccess

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

  • Not all non-text content may have appropriate alternative text
  • At higher magnification levels, selection displays can become fully obscured by other content on the site
  • Selection displays are not always clear for users who rely on keyboard navigation
  • There are examples of information conveyed by colour only
  • There are examples of text as an image
  • The website is not fully compatible with assistive software
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  • Some heading levels are missing throughout the site
  • Some content moves and this cannot be stopped or paused by the user
  • There are videos on the site that do not have human-corrected transcripts
  • There are videos on the site that do not have audio descriptions
  • There are PDF documents that are not fully accessible

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format, including accessible PDF, large print, audio recording or braille:

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 5 working days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page, or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact:

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 5 working days.

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ‘accessibility regulations’). If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) directly:

Contact details for the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS)

The government has produced information on how to report accessibility issues:

Reporting an accessibility problem on a public sector website

Contacting us by phone using British Sign Language

British Sign Language service

Contact Scotland BSL runs a service for British Sign Language users and all of Scotland’s public bodies using video relay. This enables sign language users to contact public bodies and vice versa. The service operates from 8.00am to 12.00am, 7 days a week.

Contact Scotland BSL service details.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The University of Edinburgh is committed to making its websites and applications accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Compliance Status

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

The full guidelines are available at:

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard

Non accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Noncompliance with the accessibility regulations

The following items to not comply with the WCAG 2.2 AA success criteria:

We aim to improve our website’s accessibility on a regular and continuous basis. See the section below ('What we're doing to improve accessibility') on how we are improving our site accessibility. 

We are working towards solving these problems and expect significant improvements by July 2027. The site is fully within our control.

Disproportionate burden

We are not currently claiming that any accessibility problems would be a disproportionate burden to fix.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

Many of our older PDFs are not fully accessible, for example, and they may not be easy to view using a screen reader. The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. For example, we do not plan to fix old articles in the News section that date back nearly a decade. Any new PDFs we publish will meet accessibility standards.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We have improved keyboard accessibility on the homepage, including making the carousel fully navigable using only a keyboard or screen reader. We continue to review and refine tab order, focus states, and interaction patterns to ensure users can navigate all areas of the site without a mouse.

We are auditing our content structure using the Little Forest accessibility tool to identify and fix issues with heading order and interface relationships. We’re also improving the use of ARIA roles and landmarks to support assistive technology users.

We’ve improved the homepage’s navigation sequence and are continuing to address tabbing issues and key-switching problems on other pages. This includes reviewing DOM order and updating tabindex values to ensure a logical, predictable user experience.

We are auditing all images using Little Forest to identify and fix missing or unhelpful alternative text. Our editors have received training on writing meaningful alt text.

We have introduced high-contrast, consistent focus indicators across the site to improve navigation for keyboard users. These enhancements improve visibility in areas where focus outlines were previously unclear or low contrast.

We have resolved issues with mislabelled buttons and inconsistent tooltips by applying clear ARIA labels and accessible naming conventions. We continue to test and validate components using assistive technologies.

We are reviewing existing videos to add human-edited captions and are ensuring that all new video content includes accurate captions by default. Guidance and training have been provided to content creators to support this process.

We are assessing video content for essential visual-only information and adding audio descriptions or transcripts where needed. Accessibility checks are now part of our video production workflow for future content.

Using Little Forest, we are identifying and resolving low-contrast text issues, particularly where text overlaps images or uses muted colours. We are also training editors and updating styles to meet the WCAG 4.5:1 contrast ratio.

We are replacing text within images—particularly in banners and article headings—with HTML text for better readability and accessibility. Where images of text remain or are unavoidable, such as logos, we provide meaningful alt text.

We are reviewing site links and interactions to ensure users are warned when a new tab, window, or pop-up will open. Where possible, we are avoiding pop-ups in favour of more accessible alternatives.

We regularly scan for code errors such as duplicate IDs using Little Forest and other validators. We are also reinforcing best practice among developers and editors to prevent parsing issues during content creation.

Our existing design was produced by a 3rd party design agency. This relationship has been paused for some time now, and any changes to the codebase are largely managed in-house.

We are looking to move in time to the University's EdWeb 2 Website Publishing Platform, a managed Content Management System which also incorporates the University Design System. All content will be moved to this new platform. During this time we plan to fix many of our current accessibility issues.

The University has published a web strategy and governance approach:

University of Edinburgh Web Strategy

We will continue to address the accessibility issues highlighted, alongside working to deliver a solution or suitable workaround. We are working towards solving these problems and expect significant improvements by September 30th 2026.

While we are in the process of resolving these accessibility issues, or where we are unable, we will ensure reasonable adjustments are in place to make sure no user is disadvantaged. As changes are made, we will continue to review accessibility and retest the accessibility of this website.

Accessibility improvements

Accessibility improvements, bug fixes and development work to fix issues will be recorded to keep a record of work completed.

Accessibility improvements

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 17th May 2019. It was last reviewed 26th July 2026.

The website was last tested in June 2026. The testing was carried out by the Disability Information Service at the University of Edinburgh using both automated and manual methods. The site was tested on a PC, primarily using Google Chrome alongside Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge.

Recent world-wide usage levels survey for different screen readers and browsers shows that Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge are increasing in popularity and Google Chrome is now the favoured browser for screen readers:

WebAIM: Screen Reader User Survey

The aforementioned three browsers have been used in certain questions for reasons of breadth and variety.

We ran automated testing using AXE (Google Chrome extension) and then manual testing that included:

  • Spell check functionality;
  • Scaling using different resolutions and reflow;
  • Options to customise the interface (magnification, font, background colour, etc);
  • Keyboard navigation and keyboard traps;
  • Data validation;
  • Warning of links opening in new tab or window;
  • Information conveyed in the colour or sound only;
  • Flashing, moving or scrolling text;
  • Use with screen reading software (for example JAWS);
  • Assistive software (TextHelp Read and Write, Windows Magnifier, ZoomText, Dragon Naturally Speaking, TalkBack and VoiceOver);
  • Tooltips and text alternatives for any non-text content;
  • Time limits;
  • Compatibility with mobile accessibility functionality (Android and iOS);
  • Any drag functionality and alternatives;
  • Consistent help function;
  • No need to re-enter data already submitted;
  • Any cognitive tests.

Change Log

Accessibility improvements, bug fixes and development work to fix issues will be recorded here to keep a record of work completed.

Change log of accessibility improvements

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Accessibility

Dr John Macleod

Senior Lecturer in Private Law

Director of Exams Undergraduate

Tel: +44 (0)131 650 2058

Email: John.Macleod@ed.ac.uk

View my publications

John MacLeod joined the Law School in 2018 from the University of Glasgow. His interests range across private and commercial law, with a particular focus on structural and taxonomical questions, the law of delict, the law of property and the law of debt. He has worked extensively with the Scottish Law Commission and the Law Reform Committee of the Law Society of Scotland. He delivers CPD across a range of topics.

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Professor Laura Macgregor

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Chair of Scots Law

College Promotions Representative; Head of Subject Area: Private Law

LLB, LLM, DipLP

Office hours:

Tel: +44 (0)131 650 2034

Email: l.macgregor@ed.ac.uk

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Laura Macgregor holds the Chair of Scots Law, her appointment to this Chair beginning on 1 July 2020. She is the first woman since the Chair's inception 297 years ago to hold the Chair. Before becoming an academic Laura spent several years as a solicitor in practice with a major Scottish law firm in Edinburgh. She began her academic career as a lecturer at Glasgow Law School, joining Edinburgh Law School in 2002. She is a panel member of REF Sub-Panel 18.

Ph.D. supervision interests

She welcomes PhD enquiries which relate generally to her fields of interest. In particular she would be interested in supervising research into agency law, partnership law or contract law within Europe.

Research Interests

Laura's interests lie in the field of commercial law, specifically contract law, agency law and partnership law.  Her research considers Scots law in its comparative context, both European and global. She is also interested in legal history.

She is the author of the leading monograph, Agency Law in Scotland, (ISBN 9780414018051), published in the prestigious Scottish Universities Law Institute Series. 

Currently working on a project on the law of partnership, her most recent article on this topic is 'Partnerships and Legal Personality: A Cautionary Tale From Scotland' (2020) 20 Journal of Corporate Law Studies in 237. 

Research Groups

Laura is a member of the Edinburgh Centre for Commercial Law. This is a research centre which aims to build stronger links between academia and the various parts of the legal community in Scotland. The blog for the Centre can be found here: http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ecclblog/.

Collaborative Activity

Laura has edited a number of collaborative projects in the field of European private law. Her most recent project, edited with Jaap Baaij and David Cabrelli, focussed on the law of interpretation. It has now been published as Jaap Baaij, David Cabrelli and Laura Macgregor (eds), Interpretation of Commercial Contracts in European Private Law, Intersentia, 2020. This volume was published under the auspices of the Common Core of European Private Law. 

Laura retains strong links with the legal profession and is heavily involved in the provision of CPD training to Scottish law firms. She has designed and delivered training on the law of contract to Scottish Sheriffs through the Judicial Institute. Her annual CPD course, Contract Law Update, delivered under the auspices of Edinburgh Law Seminars, takes place each year in May. The course is delivered in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and online to the Highlands and Islands. 

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Dr Euan MacDonald

Senior Lecturer in Jurisprudence

LLB, LLM, PhD

Email: Euan.Macdonald@ed.ac.uk

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Intellectual Property Law

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Edinburgh Law School has a long-standing reputation for research and teaching in intellectual property (IP) law.

“Together, we create!” on brick wall

Dating back to the foundation of the SCRIPT Research Centre in 1998, Edinburgh Law School’s profile in the field of IP grew through the activities of the AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law (2002-2012). From 2012 to 2018, Edinburgh Law School’s IP specialists formed part of the RCUK-funded multi-institutional CREATe consortium.

Current members of the IP team offer expertise spanning copyright, designs, trade marks, IP’s relationship with innovation and creativity, IP and human rights, and IP enforcement. Engaging with diverse research methodologies - doctrinal, socio-legal, and empirical – they conduct innovative research examining topics including creative and cultural intersections, international IP, Europeanisation of IP, and IP practice and policy.

Building on this expertise, the IP team offers popular research-led teaching in IP law for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, including well-established on-campus and online nominate LLM programmes in Intellectual Property Law.

Dr Kheria and Ms Cornwell are also co-authors of a leading textbook on IP rights (Contemporary Intellectual Property: Law and Policy, Oxford University Press).

Jane Cornwell, Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law

Smita Kheria, Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law

Amandine Léonard, Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law

Emmanuel Oke, Senior Lecturer in International Intellectual Property Law

Gerard Porter, Senior Lecturer in Medical Law and Ethics

 

Exploring the Interface between Intellectual Property and International Investment Law: A Human Rights Perspective
Recent high profile investment tribunal claims against states challenging measures relating to IP have led to increased scrutiny and concern over the interface between IP law and international investment law. Dr Emmanuel Oke’s research critically examines the interface between these two fields from a human rights perspective, aiming to provide insights regarding the role that international human rights law can play with regard to securing the twin complementary objectives of protecting foreign investments and fostering economic development.

Copyright in the everyday lives of creative practitioners
Dr Smita Kheria’s socio-legal research evaluates the complexities of copyright in a ‘real world’ context focussing on the intersection of copyright law with the everyday lives of creative practitioners. Her work addresses fundamental policy questions: Does copyright law matter? Who does it matter to and why? Who is it resisted by and why? How can this regulatory framework remain relevant and fit for purpose in an uncertain fast-moving social, technological, and economic landscape? Recent grants that have enabled this ongoing research include two projects led by Dr Kheria through the programme of the RCUK funded CREATe centre: Individual Creators and Creators’ Organisations.

Is online streaming akin to radio, a digital download, or a derived hybrid?
Funded by the Scottish Graduate School of Arts Humanities’ Creative Economies Studentship scheme, this research addresses whether the current legal framework is fit for purpose in rewarding musicians and music creators in the changing digital music consumption landscape. Supervised by Dr Smita Kheria, Edinburgh Law School PhD candidate Desmond Agyekumhene is examining the development, role, and place of online streaming services, and related flow of streaming revenues, with the objective of evaluating if the legal framework for rights of musicians and music creators remains fit for purpose.

SCRIPT Centre
The SCRIPT Centre explores the synergetic relationship between law, technologies, commerce and society.
Visit the SCRIPT Centre website

Professor Cormac Mac Amhlaigh

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Professor of Public Law

Staff Development Officer

Ph.D (EUI)

Office hours:

Tel: +44 (0)131 651 4373

Email: cormac.mac.amhlaigh@ed.ac.uk

SSRN: http://www.ssrn.com/author=1113313

View my publications

Cormac Mac Amhlaigh is Professor of Public Law at Edinburgh Law School.

In his current research, he is developing a perfectionist theory of democracy which argues for a dominant role for autonomy in the justification of democracy as well as a positive role for political power in promoting the democratic autonomy and democratic capacity of citizens.   

Other strands of his research in this area include critically analysing of the value of pluralism and political disagreement and its relationship to democracy.  These themes were explored in his Vienna Lecture in International Legal Philosophy entitled ‘Dworkin on Disagreement’ delivered at the University of Vienna in 2023, as well as his Inaugural Lecture at Edinburgh University entitled ‘Holding the Centre?:  Politics, Pluralism and Public Law’ which examined the harms of populism through the lens of pluralism and can be accessed here. 

He also researches the role of pluralism and disagreement in constitutional law, and particularly the role of judicial review in this context – commonly known as political constitutionalism or the counter-majoritarian difficulty  -   as well as the role of constitutional rights and constitutional courts in democracy promotion with a specific emphasis on the European Court of Human Rights.  His research in these areas has been published in the International Journal of Constitutional Law, Res Publica and Global Constitutionalism.

His previous research lay in the area of legal and constitutional pluralism at the transnational and international levels with a particular focus on the idea of constitutional pluralism in the European Union.  His 2022 book, New Constitutional Horizons:  Towards a Pluralist Constitutional Theory (OUP, 2022) developed a novel theory of constitutional pluralism drawing on the theorization of legal and political pluralism in the work of Joseph Raz and Ronald Dworkin and was favourably reviewed in the Modern Law Review, Public Law, the International Journal of Constitutional Law, the European Journal of International Law, Jurisprudence, Global Constitutionalism and the Jindahl Global Law Review.  His work in this area has also been published in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Jurisprudence,  Global Constitutionalism, The Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies and the Oxford Handbook of Legal Pluralism. 

A full list of his publications can be found here.

He welcomes inquiries from potential doctoral students interested in researching any of these topics.

He holds a PhD in Law from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy; an LL.M in European Law from University College Dublin; and an LL.B in Law and Hispanic Studies from Queen’s University Belfast, a year of which was spent as an Erasmus exchange student at the University of Zaragoza, Spain.  He has held visiting fellowships at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Copenhagen, and was a Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute in 2022.  Prior to undertaking doctoral studies, he worked in government and legal research.

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Professor Graeme Laurie

Professorial Fellow

LLB, PhD, FRSE, FRCPE, FMedSci

Tel: +44 (0)131-650-2020

Email: Graeme.Laurie@ed.ac.uk

SSRN: Papers

Graeme Laurie is Professorial Fellow in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh and Founding Director of the JK Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Sciences and the Law. He held the Chair of Medical Jurisprudence from 2005-2019. Currently, he is the Editor-in-Chief of the Asian Bioethics Review and Principal Investigator of a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award for a project entitled Confronting the Liminal Spaces of Health Research Regulation. This is a £1 million, five-year, interdisciplinary project running from October 2014 until March 2021. He is also a member of the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society, also funded by Wellcome to over £1 million, which is in interdisciplinary initiative to examine social science, legal and ethical contributions to biomedicine and novel partnerships in the co-production of biomedical knowledge and innovation.

Graeme Laurie served as the Director of Research for the School of Law (2011-2014). He previously held the role of PI and Director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law - also known as SCRIPT - from 2007-2011 until he took up the position of Director of Research. He is Founding Director of the JK Mason Institute for Medicine, life Sciences and the Law, established in 2012, and he held the role of Director from 2012-2017.

Twitter: @GraemeLaurie @LiminalSpaces @MasonInstitute

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Professor Andrew Lang

Professor of International Law and Global Governance

Office hours:

Email: Andrew.Lang@ed.ac.uk

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Professor Andrew Lang joined the Edinburgh School of Law in 2017 as the Chair in International Law and Global Governance. Prior to that, he was Professor of Law at the London School of Economics, where he taught from 2006 to 2017. From 2004-6, Professor Lang was a Junior Research Fellow at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge. He has a combined BA/LLB from the University of Sydney, where he was a double University Medallist, and his PhD is from the University of Cambridge. 

Professor Lang is an expert in Public International Law, with a specialty in International Economic Law and the Law of the World Trade Organization. His research explores the role of international law and international institutions in the construction of global markets, and the distribution of power and value in the global economy. His forthcoming book, Architectures of Credibility, due to be published with OUP in early 2027, examines these themes in the context of regulatory interoperability. 

Professor Andrew Lang is co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Economic Law, and sits on the Editorial Committee of the Modern Law Review, and the Editorial Board of the International and Comparative Law Quarterly. He has been selected for inclusion in a list of individuals suitable for appointment as Chairperson for arbitrations and Trade and Sustainable Development expert panel proceedings under EU bilateral free trade agreements, and has been included on the UK’s list of arbitrators for dispute settlement under the UK’s Free Trade Agreements. He has also been included in the WTO's approved roster of legal experts pursuant to article 27.2 of the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding.

Professor Lang has taught on Harvard's Institute for Global Law and Policy, the University Melbourne LLM program, the World Trade Institute's Masters of International Law and Economics (MILE) program, the University of Barcelona's IELPO course, as well as the IIEM Academy of International Trade Law in Macau. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, Visiting Fellow at the Institute of International Economic Law at Georgetown University Law Center, Visiting Faculty at the University of Michigan, and an International Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sydney. He is a co-founder, with Colin Picker, of the Society of International Economic Law. 

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Dr Smita Kheria

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Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law

LLB (Hons), LLM, PhD

Office hours:

Email: smita.kheria@ed.ac.uk

View my publications

Smita is a Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law in Edinburgh Law School. She studied at the University of Buckingham (LLB (Hons)), the University of Cambridge (LLM), and at Queen's University Belfast (PhD). Before undertaking her doctoral studies, she also practised as an advocate in commercial and intellectual property law. Her primary areas of teaching and research expertise are in copyright and related rights, creative practices and new technologies, and socio-legal research in intellectual property law. 

Research interests

Smita’s socio-legal research evaluates the complexities of copyright in a ‘real world’ context, with a particular focus on the law’s role in an uncertain fast-moving social, technological, and economic landscape. Through several UKRI funded research projects, she has empirically examined how copyright intersects with the everyday lives and practices of online creative communities, arts and humanities researchers, and professional creators and performers, as well as how creators’ organisations shape copyright policy. Her most recent project focused on streaming services in the music industry. Her publications provide a strong representation of artists’ understandings, voices, and concerns, about copyright, as a community separate from other stakeholders, and underline how insights from the lived everyday experiences of copyright challenge existing economic and legal assumptions about both what creative practitioners want and the meanings they associate with legal protections. She has recently co-edited a collection entitled ‘Legal Geographies of Intellectual Property’ (forthcoming, Edward Elgar) and is currently working on a monograph, entitled ‘Close Encounters of the Copyright Kind: Locating the law in the everyday lives of creative practitioners.

As part of her commitment to knowledge-exchange, Smita has shared her research extensively with non-academic audiences. Smita has drawn on empirical insights from her projects to contribute to policy discussions (e.g. UK music streaming inquiry; CMO regulation in Kenya), to inform the practice of creative industry organisations and practitioners (e.g. Edinburgh Fringe Central, Society of Young Publishers, Scottish Book Trust, Glasgow Comic Con, Glasgow Zine Library, Talbot Rice Gallery), and to engage the general public on the role and value of copyright (e.g. spoken-word shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Stand Comedy Club).

Teaching

Smita is the founding and acting Programme Director for the on-campus LLM in Intellectual Property Law and teaches on a number of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the Law School. She is a co-author of the textbook Contemporary Intellectual Property: Law and Policy (3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th eds, Oxford University Press). Along with teaching substantive law, her teaching has championed the integration of socio-legal and empirical research in the intellectual property law curriculum. She also contributes to cross-disciplinary teaching on the Edinburgh Futures Institute’s MSc in Creative Industries.

Administrative roles

Smita is the Chair of the Socio-Legal Studies Association, and has previously served on its board of trustees as the Vice Chair and the International Liaison officer. She co-convenes the 'Intellectual Property' stream at the SLSA Annual Conference,  and is co-founder of the Network for Empirical Legal Studies in Intellectual Property. She has previously served as the Head of IP, Media and Technology Subject area, the Director of Knowledge Exchange and Impact, Chair of Recruitment Strategy Taskforce, and Co-convenor of the Empirical Legal Research Network, in Edinburgh Law School. She is a member of the SCRIPT Centre and has previously served as its Co-Director (IP Law) as well as a Supervising editor (IP) for SCRIPTed: A journal of Law, Technology & Society. She is an external examiner for Intellectual Property Law at the London School of Economics and Queen Mary University of London. She has previously served as external examiner at the University of Leeds, University of East Anglia, and the University of Surrey. Beyond academia, she serves as a board member of Edinburgh Printmakers.

PhD supervision interests

Smita welcomes applications for doctoral study and post-doctoral mentoring. She is particularly interested in proposals for postgraduate research in the area of copyright and related rights, and also projects that use empirical methodologies to study issues in Intellectual Property Law.

She currently supervises:

Des Agyekumhene
Naomi Korn
Mihail Dishev

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