Mr Damien McCallig

PhD in Law candidate

B.Comm., LLB, LLM

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Biography

Damien McCallig  is a final year Ph.D. Candidate in the School of Law.  His research, which is funded by the Irish Research Council (IRC), is entitled The Law of Digital Remains: Reconciling the dignity and interests of the deceased with those of the living, and is supervised by Marie McGonagle.  The research aims to provide a theoretical, philosophical and practical framework for developing an appropriate regulatory regime for digital remains aimed at reconciling the rights and interests of the deceased with those of living stake-holders.  Further details regarding his Ph.D. research is available here.

Damien graduated from NUI Galway with an LL.M in Law, Technology and Governance in 2010 and an LL.B. in 2009, achieving first class honours in both.  He was the winner of the Irish Times Prize in Media Law, 2009, which is an annual prize awarded to the student who achieves the highest mark at examination in the subject of Media Law. Damien regularly contributes to IRIS – Legal Observations of the European Audiovisual Observatory, which addresses many of the cutting-edge issues in the media and communications fields. 

Research

Research Interests

• Copyright
• Data Protection
• Internet Law and Regulation
• Information Rights
• Media Law and Regulation
• Privacy

Research Projects

PhD Thesis

‘The Law of Digital Remains: Reconciling the dignity and interests of the deceased with those of the living.’

The research aims to provide a theoretical, philosophical and practical framework for developing an appropriate regulatory regime for digital remains aimed at reconciling the rights and interests of the deceased with those of living stake-holders.  Further details regarding Damien’s Ph.D. research is available here.

Research Publications

Peer Reviewed Journals

• “Facebook after death: an evolving policy in a social network”, International Journal of Law and Information Technology (2014) advance access.
• “Private But Eventually Public: Why Copyright in Unpublished Works Matters in the Digital Age”, (2013) 10:1 SCRIPTed 39.
• “Online behavioural advertising: are Irish privacy laws in need of ‘re-Phorm’?”, (2011) 16 Communications Law 60.

Other Journals

• “Memoria in aeterna: who owns your digital legacy”, (2013) January/February Law Society Gazette 22.

Conference Papers

• “Data protection and the Deceased in the European Union”, Computers Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP), (Brussels, January 2014).
• “Intrusion into Private Grief: Regulating the reporting and presentation of deceased persons in modern media”, Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference (Edinburgh, September 2013).
• “Dealing with Digital Remains: Is Recognising Digital Assets as Probate Property the Solution?”, Centre of Death and Society (CDAS) Annual Conference 2013, (Bath, June 2013).
• “Dealing with Digital Remains: Is Recognising Digital Assets as Probate Property the Solution?”, BILETA 2013, (Liverpool, April 2013).
• “Privacy After Death”, NUI Galway Privacy Symposium, (Galway, March 2013).
• “Second guessing the intentions of the deceased under the quasi-succession right to information”, #FOI15: the right to know, (Limerick, February 2013).
• “The Law of Digital Remains”, Death Online Research Network, (Copenhagen, January 2013).
• “Private but Eventually Public: Why Copyright in Unpublished Works Matters in the Digital Age”, Amsterdam Privacy Conference (Amsterdam, October 2012).
• “Auto-Icon in the 21st Century: What lessons for the regulation of the Digital Remains of the dead?”, GiKII VII, (UEA, London, September 2012).
• “The Deceased as Data Subjects: Analysis of the Scope and Application of EU Data Protection Law”, Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference (Bristol, September 2012).

Teaching Areas

Teaching interests include:

• Copyright
• Constitutional Law – Freedom of Expression
• Entertainment Law – Commercial Expression/Online Behavioural Advertising
• Privacy/Data Protection