Prof Fiona Macmillan

Overview

Biography

Fiona Macmillan holds degrees from the University of New South Wales and the University of London. She is admitted as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. Previously, she has held academic positions at the University of New South Wales, the University of Leicester, and the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London. Immediately prior to her appointment in the School of Law at Birkbeck, Fiona Macmillan was Associate Professor of Law and Copyright Director of the Asia Pacific Intellectual Property Institute at Murdoch University in Western Australia.

She joined the School of Law as a Reader in September 2000 and became a Professor of Law in 2002. From October 2003 to September 2009 she was Birkbeck's Pro-Vice Master for Research. She has been a Visiting Professor of Law at L'Universita' degli Studi Roma Tre since 2009 and Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg since 2016; and she became the Co-Director of the International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property in 2014.

Highlights

• My lastest book Intellectual and Cultural Property, Between Market and Community will be published in November 2020

• Macmillan, Fiona (2020) Il diritto d’autore nell’era digitale: verso il declino dell’originalità dell’opera?. pp. 109-119. ISBN 9791280060013

Visiting posts

• Visiting Professor of Law, Università Roma Tre, 10-2009
• Visiting Professor of Law, University of Gothenberg, 11-2016 to 11-2019
• Visiting Professor of Law, University of Technology Sydney, 02-2011 to 02-2012
• Visiting Professor of Law, University of Melbourne, 06-2011 to 07-2011

Professional activities

Co-Director, International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP) from 2014

Research Affiliate, Osgoode Hall Law School, Intellectual Property Law and Technology Programme, from 2005

Member of the Advisory Board for the Velux funded project on The Past’s Future: Digital Transformations and Cultural Heritage Institutions, Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen from 2015

Member of the International Advisory Board of Law, Social Justice and Global Development

Member of the Editorial Board, Media and Arts Law Review

Member of Editorial Board, Manchester Journal of International Economic Law

Member of the Committee of Referees, Diritto Mercato Tecnologia

Peer Reviewer, British Academy Interdisciplinary Research Call The Humanities and Social Sciences Tackling the UK’s International Challenges, 2017 to date

Honours and awards

• Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts for contribution to research in law and cultural studies, Royal Society of the Arts, July 2012

Research

Research interests

• Intellectual property
• Cultural property
• International economic law

Research overview

Fiona Macmillan's research is focused on the areas of intellectual property, cultural property and international economic law. She has a particular interest in the political economy of these areas of law, and especially in the way in which it affects the balance between public and private rights and interests.

Completed funded research projects

AHRC Copyright Research Network

Fiona Macmillan was awarded an AHRC research grant to establish an international, multidisciplinary network of scholars to consider new directions in copyright law. The core participants in the network are copyright scholars working across a range of different disciplines, including law, economics, politics and political economy, cultural studies, and social theory. With input from a range of copyright stakeholders, the network will play a leading role in stimulating international research and debate about the future of the copyright system.

The work of the network has been pursued through six interrelated themes, which are:

1. Theoretical Framework of Copyright Law
2. Globalisation, Convergence and Divergence
3. Developments in Rights Neighbouring on Copyright
4. Protection of Traditional Knowledge and Culture
5. Copyright and the New Technologies
6. Copyright, Corporate Power and Human Rights
   

Cultivate Project

Fiona Macmillan was the recipient of a three-year research grant under the HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) Joint Research Programme as part of an interdisciplinary collaborative research project, which commenced in March 2010. The collaborative research project, which is entitled Copyrighting Creativity: Creative Values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property will be led by Professor Helle Porsdam of the University of Copenhagen. As part of the collaborative research project, Fiona Macmillan will address The Relationship between Copyright, Cultural Property and Human Rights: Case Study on the Policy and Practice of Arts Festivals.

The first Working Paper for this project is now available on the Cultivate Project website. 

AHRC Copyright Satellite Funding

Fiona Macmillan was part of an interdisciplinary research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council Copyright Satellites Funding Scheme on Economic Survival in a Long Established Creative Industry: Strategies, Business Models and Copyright in Music Publishing (with Dr Jose Bellido and Professors Maurizio Borghi and Ruth Towse), 2013-2015.

Research Centres and Institutes

• Member of International Sounding Board since 2013, Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy
• Member since 2014, Communal Property Research Network

Research clusters and groups

• Critical Legal and Criminological Theory Research Cluster
• Law and Humanities Research Cluster
• Regulation, Risk and Surveillance Research Cluster

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions external to Birkbeck:

1

Supervisions within Birkbeck:

9

Professor Macmillan is interested in providing research supervision in:

• Copyright law, theory and policy
• Cultural property/heritage
• International economic law, theory and policy
• Interface between law and political economy
  

If you are interested in pursuing research in any of these areas, you should first read our advice on how to apply for MPhil/PhD research before submitting an application.

Current doctoral researchers

• MICHAEL DARKE

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2017 onwards

• SOUMYAJIT BASU

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2020 onwards

• TATIANA-LYNN MAKHOUL

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2019 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  Blockchain Technology in Copyright Rights Management for Music

  Description:

   

   This thesis aims to reconcile blockchain technological within the realm of copyright law and its application to the music industry. The intent is to prove the hypothesis that blockchain technology will radically effect and positively benefit the music industry. In order to do so, this will entail a comparative jurisdictional approach to copyright law within the UK, EU and US. The purpose for selecting these jurisdictions is that copyright law is highly developed in the aforementioned jurisdictions and major record labels tend to operate within them. As a consequence of this, these jurisdictions set important precedents that are subsequently echoed in other jurisdictions. By extracting the copyright laws in place within these jurisdictions, they can be assessed in the light of the technological features of blockchain technology and consequently applied to develop innovative solutions to the issues of inaccurate royalty distribution, collecting accurate rights management data and restricting unlicensed use across digital platforms. In order to assess these prospects, the thesis will entail an assessment of the technical features of blockchain technology and their potential applications. The thesis will critically analyse the current academic debate on the advantages and the limitations of utilising blockchain technology. This will entail an attempt to challenge scholarly opinions that dismiss the use of blockchain technology within the music industry by critically engaging with the technical limitations and analysing its features combined with its code-based mechanisms. This in depth analysis will also consider whether smart contracts will be effective in assigning or licensing the rights granted under copyright law and whether it constitutes an enforceable agreement. Furthermore, the thesis will also analyse whether the enforcement mechanisms that will be employed in order to detect unlicensed use, will be effective to the enforcement of copyright law across digital platforms. As a consequence of this, the research will include a proposal for the establishment of a code-based platform on blockchain for digital rights management and copyright licensing within the music industry.

Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

• HENRIQUE CARVALHO

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2014

  Title of thesis:

  Abstracted Objects: The vernacular metaphysics of copyright law

  Awarded:

  2022

• NATALIA DELGADO BERESI

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2015

  Title of thesis:

  Normative Antinomy: A critical analysis of the relationship between the International Labour Organization and the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

  Awarded:

  2022

• DYLAN VAN HOUCKE

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2015 to Nov 2018

  Title of thesis:

  The Right to Ongoing Self-Determination: creating a standard for mitigating the adverse effects of how international law distributes and authorises the exercise of sovereignty

  Awarded:

  2021

• OZAN KAMILOGLU

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2012

  Title of thesis:

  Human rights from Below: Neutrality, the Subject, and the Revolutionaries

  Awarded:

  2020

Teaching

Teaching modules

• International Intellectual Property (LALW104S7)

Publications

Business and community

Media

I am happy to receive enquiries from the media on the following topics:

• Intellectual property
• Cultural property
• International economic law