News | 23 September 2024

Winner of the 2023 Pierre Lalive and John Henry Merryman Fellowship

LALIVE is proud to congratulate the winner of the 2023 Pierre Lalive and John Henry Merryman Fellowship in Art and Cultural Heritage Law, Dr Luke McDonagh, for his outstanding article: “Exploring ‘ownership’ of Irish traditional dance music: Heritage or property?”, which is available here.

Dr McDonagh’s article explores the intersection between cultural heritage and intellectual property. It addresses the challenges of applying a modern legal framework to traditional cultural expressions and emphasizes the need for a nuanced understanding of heritage as collectively owned and preserved. His work brings to light the tension between cultural preservation and legal ownership, advocating for a balanced approach that respects both the communal nature of cultural heritage and the demands of contemporary intellectual property law.

The Pierre Lalive and John Henry Merryman Fellowship in Art and Cultural Heritage Law was established in 2018 by the University of Geneva Art-Law Centre and the International Cultural Property Society, in honour of two eminent scholars in the field, Professors Pierre Lalive and John Henry Merryman. It has been proudly co-sponsored by LALIVE ever since.

The aim of the fellowship is to support the work of emerging scholars active in the field of international cultural heritage law, art law and museum law. It is awarded annually to an author aged under 40 for the best article published in the International Journal of Cultural Property Law (Cambridge University Press). Each Fellow is hosted by the Art-Law Centre of the University of Geneva for two to four weeks to conduct research in the field and participate in the Art-Law Centre’s activities.

Previous Fellows were:

• 2022: Adnan Almohamad (Syria) for his article “The destruction and looting of cultural heritage sites by Isis in Syria: The case of Manbij and its countryside.”
• 2021: Tamás Szabados (Budapest) for his article “In Search of the Holy Grail of the Conflict of Laws of Cultural Property.”
• 2020: Luke Tattersall (London) for his article “Derailing State Immunity: A Broad-Brush Approach to Jurisdiction under Claims for the Expropriation of Cultural Property.”
• 2019: Tabitha Oost (Amsterdam) for her article “Restitution Policies on Nazi-Looted Art in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom: A Change from a Legal to a Moral Paradigm?”

For more information on the Fellowship, please click here.

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