Dr. Michaela McDonald's main research interest is in governing behaviour and interactions in digital environments. She has been involved in and actively shaped Interactive Entertainment research and scholarship for the last 15 years.
Through teaching, academic and public engagement activities, together with colleague, Dr Gaetano Dimita (CCLS), Dr. McDonald aims to promote a broader understanding of the subject, to provide an informed and visionary expertise and to facilitate an objective and independent dialogue with the relevant stakeholders. This is essential for the consolidation and further development of Interactive Entertainment Law as an independent legal discipline.
They teach modules dedicated to Interactive Entertainment Law (Dr. Dimita teaches it at CCLS, Dr. McDonald teaches it as a Visiting professor at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic). The first LLM module in Interactive Entertainment Law (IEL) in Europe was launched in 2013 by Dr. Dimita. Two new modules have been recently introduced into the LLM curriculum at CCLS in 2020/21 – Interactive Entertainment Transactions and E-sports Law.
An increasing number of IEL alumni work in-house for AAA video game publishers, practice in specialist law firms or are pursuing a PhD in this field.
Dr Gaetano Dimita, Dr Yin Harn Lee (University of Bristol) and Dr Michaela MacDonald are co-editors in chief of the Interactive Entertainment Law Review (IELR) published by Edward Elgar, the first academic peer-reviewed journal in IEL. Since 2018, the Journal has served as an academic platform for legal analysis of video games, virtual/augmented/mixed realities, social media, and all related and new forms of digital interactive entertainment. The Journal is published twice a year with articles focusing on the legal changes, challenges and controversy in this high profile and increasingly critical area of legal inquiry. All issues are available at www.elgaronline.com/view/journals/ielr/ielr-overview.xml.
‘More than Just a Game’ (MTJG – www.mtjg.co.uk), a unique series of academic-led conferences on Games and Interactive Entertainment Law has been running since 2015. These events attract an international network of researchers and legal professionals. MTJG encourages collaboration among the industry, legal profession, and academics at a time when games and interactive entertainment are facing unprecedented new challenges relating to social issues, industry autonomy, and the regulation of technology. MTJG is now the most successful conference series in this field with events in London (the flagship two-day conference), Paris, Madrid, Frankfurt, Maastricht, Milan and Warsaw.
In 2022, they (Dr. Dimita, Dr. arn Lee and Dr. MacDonald) published research, commissioned by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and presented in Geneva in September 2022, which identified potentially infringing uses and practices that are unique to video games and the industry. The study can be found here:
https://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/doc_details.jsp?doc_id=576652
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2022/pr/ip-is-the-name-of-the-game-first-global-study-into-copyright-infringement-and-enforcement-strategies-in-the-video-game-industry-reveals-key-threats-and-recommendations.html
They (Gaetano Dimita, Yin Harn Lee, Michaela MacDonald, Anthony Michael Catton, Zeynep Kubra Kavcar Penbegullu, and Juan Alberto Pulido Lock) are awaiting publication of a report commissioned by the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO), which investigates potential IP issues that need to be considered in the development of policies and strategies for the Metaverse. The report will be officially presented at the annual flagship MTJG event in London on the 19th - 21st April 2023. The theme is ‘The Constitution of the Metaverse'.