As of 1 May 2019, McGonagle holds the chair in Media Law & Information Society. The chair is financed by the A.W. Hins Fund, administered by the Leiden University Fund. Tarlach specializes in a range of issues relating to media law and the information society: freedom of expression; the interface between information and communication technologies and human rights; international and comparative media regulation and policy; the future of news and journalism; minority rights; the safety of journalists; hate speech and media pluralism. He coordinates and teaches the course, Media Law and the Information Society, at Leiden Law School. The course is offered as a ‘profileringsvak’ as part of the master programme in Constitutional and Administrative Law.

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Besides his position at Leiden Law School, Tarlach is a senior researcher/lecturer at the Institute for Information Law (IViR), Amsterdam Law School, where he has worked in various capacities since 2001. He was awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Amsterdam in 2008 for his thesis examining the interface between freedom of expression and minority rights under European and international law.

He is a senior researcher in the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research, where he co-chairs the Working Group on human rights in the digital age. He is also a member of the Euromedia Research Group.

Tarlach regularly advises and writes expert studies and policy texts for various branches of international organizations such as the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). He is a member of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on quality journalism in the digital age, having previously served as Rapporteur of both the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on media pluralism and transparency of media ownership (2016-17) and its Committee of Experts on protection of journalism and safety of journalists (2014-15). He was principal drafter of the Tallinn Guidelines on National Minorities and the Media in the Digital Age for the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities.

At Amsterdam Law School, Tarlach coordinates and lectures on a number of courses on the specialized master programme in Information Law (Informatierecht). He was voted Amsterdam Law School Lecturer of the Year for 2018. 

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