Ms Ricki-Lee Gerbrandt
BA Hons, JD, LLM, PhD
Expertise
Ricki-Lee is an international lawyer and legal scholar. Her expertise is in media law and freedom, including the regulation of social media, content moderation, disinformation, defamation, journalist safety, and positive rights.
Current positions
Lecturer
University of Bristol Law School
Contact
Press and media
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Biography
Ricki-Lee is an experienced international lawyer and legal scholar. She is currently Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at Bristol Law School and Senior Research Associate at University College London's Digital Speech Lab and Associate Editor of the Journal of Media Law. Her scholarly work concerns media law and freedom of expression from domestic, comparative and international perspectives.
An experienced barrister, Ricki-Lee has represented a global social media platform in a novel intermediary liability case, leading Canadian newspapers, broadcasters, and journalists in defamation, SLAPP-suit, and publication ban cases, and successfully represented the leading Canadian ISPs in a constitutional challenge.
Ricki-Lee has published widely in leading journals, including in Public Law, the European Human Rights Law Review, the Journal of Media Law, and Stanford’s Journal of Online Trust and Safety. Committed to engaging in law and policy work internationally, Ricki-Lee provides expert submissions to governments, regulators and legislatures. Recent activities include delivering a workshop to over 30 judges in Thailand on bad faith lawsuits at the invitation of the Clooney Foundation for Justice and the Human Rights Institute at Columbia University, presenting at UNESCO's 2026 World Press Freedom Day in Zambia, and co-hosting a workshop on the ‘public interest’ at the Bonavero Institute for Human Rights at the University of Oxford. She regularly judges the Price Media Law Moot Court Competition and is a member of the Journalist Safety Research Network at the Centre for Freedom of the Media.
Ricki-Lee has a BA (Hon) in Political Science (Western), a Juris Doctor (Calgary), an LLM (Harvard), and has submitted her PhD in Law (Cambridge). She has held fellowships at UCL and Harvard and an associateship at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge.
An experienced barrister, Ricki-Lee has represented a global social media platform in a novel intermediary liability case, leading Canadian newspapers, broadcasters, and journalists in defamation, SLAPP-suit, and publication ban cases, and successfully represented the leading Canadian ISPs in a constitutional challenge.
Ricki-Lee has published widely in leading journals, including in Public Law, the European Human Rights Law Review, the Journal of Media Law, and Stanford’s Journal of Online Trust and Safety. Committed to engaging in law and policy work internationally, Ricki-Lee provides expert submissions to governments, regulators and legislatures. Recent activities include delivering a workshop to over 30 judges in Thailand on bad faith lawsuits at the invitation of the Clooney Foundation for Justice and the Human Rights Institute at Columbia University, presenting at UNESCO's 2026 World Press Freedom Day in Zambia, and co-hosting a workshop on the ‘public interest’ at the Bonavero Institute for Human Rights at the University of Oxford. She regularly judges the Price Media Law Moot Court Competition and is a member of the Journalist Safety Research Network at the Centre for Freedom of the Media.
Ricki-Lee has a BA (Hon) in Political Science (Western), a Juris Doctor (Calgary), an LLM (Harvard), and has submitted her PhD in Law (Cambridge). She has held fellowships at UCL and Harvard and an associateship at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge.
Publications
Recent publications
28/10/2026Combatting Private Censorship of Journalism? The Media Privileges in the EU’s Digital Services Act, the European Media Freedom Act and the UK’s Online Safety Act
Media Freedom Under Threat: The Weaponisation of Law against Journalism
Content Moderation, the UK Online Safety Act, and the European Convention on Human Rights
Public Law
"Effective system of protection of journalists" and "without fear" principles: the ECHR's positive obligations to protect journalist safety and security in the digital era
European Human Rights Law Review
Should Social Media Companies Permit Violating Content that is "Newsworthy"?
Journal of Online Trust and Safety
Threatening & protecting press publishers and journalism in the UK’s regulation of social media platforms
Journal of Media Law
Teaching
Ricki-Lee teaches Information Technology Law in the undergraduate and graduate programmes and Constitutional Rights in the undergraduate programme at Bristol Law School. She previously taught Human Rights Law at the University of Cambridge and taught seminars in Cambridge's LLM programme on Information Law, Law and Technology, and Private Law and Human Rights. She was also an Adjunct Lecturer in Tort Law in the JD programme at the University of Calgary. She has delivered guest lectures at leading institutions, including Sciences Po.