Biography

Jan Oster (Dr. iur., University of Mainz/Germany, 2009) is assistant professor (universitair docent) for EU Law and Institutions at the Department of History. He teaches minor/pre-master courses and graduate courses on EU Law, Law and Economics of European Integration, Justice and Home Affairs, and EU Institutions, in the BA and MA European Union Studies programme. His research interests broadly lie in the area of information and communication law, EU law, and the law of torts, with a focus on comparative and private international tort law. Jan has written, among other things, on theory and doctrine of media freedom as a legal concept, on the influence of European law on the domestic protection of human rights, on the private international law of torts against personality rights, and on the EU Regulation on credit rating agencies.

Curriculum vitae

Jan studied law at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz/Germany, where he subsequently worked as a research and teaching assistant. After passing his second State Examination in law he obtained an LL.M. degree at the University of California Berkeley in 2007. In 2009 he finished his PhD thesis on network infrastructure regulation. Between 2009 and 2013, Jan worked as the DAAD Lecturer in Law at King’s College London The Dickson Poon School of Law, where he taught EU Law, Tort Law, Comparative and International Privacy and Defamation Law, and German Law. He gave speeches and presentations in Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Selected publications

• European and International Media Law: Cambridge University Press, 2017

• Religiously Offensive Speech: A Doctrinal Inquiry, Review of International Law and Politics 12 (2016), 139 – 178

• Media Freedom as a Fundamental Right: Cambridge University Press, 2015

• Communication, defamation and liability of intermediaries, Legal Studies 35 (2015), 348 - 368

• Public Policy and Human Rights, Journal of Private International Law 11 (2016), 542 - 567

• Theory and Doctrine of ‘Media Freedom’ as a Legal Concept, Journal of Media Law 5 (2013), 57 – 78

• Rethinking Shevill: Conceptualising the EU Private International Law of Internet Torts against Personality Rights, International Review of Law, Computers & Technology 26 (2012), 113 – 128

• The Criticism of Trading Corporations and their Right to Sue for Defamation, Journal of European Tort Law 2 (2011), 255 – 279

• ‘Who Rates the Raters?’ – The Regulation of Credit Rating Agencies in the EU, Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law 17 (2010), 353 – 376

Publications