Dr Sejal Parmar

(she/her)

Publication

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Research

Parmar’s main field of research, policy engagement, and teaching is international human rights law. She has particular expertise in the area of freedom of expression, including on issues of media freedom, and harmful speech, such as hate speech and disinformation.

Parmar has published broadly in the field of international human rights law, particularly in the area of freedom of expression. She was an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Human Rights until 2023.

Parmar is currently a fellow at the Centre for Freedom of the Media at the School of Journalism at the University of Sheffield and at the Center for Media, Data and Society at the Central European University. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

She has been a EU-US Fulbright Scholar and Emile Noël Fellow at New York University School of Law, a Marie Curie Fellow at the Amsterdam Centre for International Law, and a visiting scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.

Teaching

Parmar teaches on undergraduate modules in Media Law (which she co-convenes), Public International Law, and EU law, and also teaches on the postgraduate module on Human Rights and Global Justice. 

Parmar has previously convened and taught a range of modules in her previous full-time academic roles at the Department of Legal Studies and the then School of Public Policy (now Department of Public Policy) at the Central European University (CEU) and the School of Law at the University of Sheffield. These include modules in the field of international human rights law and practice – including International Human Rights Law, the UN Human Rights System, International Human Rights Advocacy, and Model United Nations – and in the particular thematic area of freedom of expression – including Freedom of Expression in Practice, Media Freedom and Human Rights, and Freedom of Expression in the Digital Age. 

She has also taught modules in international and European human rights law as a Visiting Lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London, the University of Edinburgh, and University College London. 

Parmar's teaching was Highly Commended for the 2022 Vice-Chancellor's Award for Learning and Teaching in Employability at the University of Sheffield and recognised through her nomination for the 2020 Teaching Excellence Award at CEU.

She holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching for Learning in Higher Education (PGCert) and is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Biography

Over the course of her career, Parmar has accrued extensive experience of working within/with academic institutions, intergovernmental organisations, civil society organisations, the foreign ministry of her home state (the UK), and technology companies.  

Between 2022 and 2024, Parmar was the ESRC/AHRC Policy Fellow in Foreign Policy and Disinformation, with a focus on human rights, at the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO). Before coming to Cardiff University, she was Lecturer in Law, Director of the Human Rights Forum, Deputy Director of the Sheffield Centre for International and Comparative Law (SCIEL), and Deputy Director of Research (Impact) at the School of Law at the University of Sheffield, and a regular Visiting Professor at the Department of Legal Studies at the Central European University (CEU). Before that, she was a tenured Assistant Professor at the Department of Legal Studies and Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy (now Department of Public Policy) at CEU in Budapest and then in Vienna. 

Parmar has served as Senior Adviser to the Organization on Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Representative on Freedom of the Media (on secondment from the then Foreign and Commonwealth Office) at the OSCE Secretariat in Vienna. She has worked as Senior Legal Officer at ARTICLE 19 at its global headquarters in London, leading its engagement with UN human rights bodies, including during the consultations towards the adoption of General Comment No 34 on Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by the Human Rights Committee (freedom of expression) and the Rabat Plan of Action.

Parmar regularly acts as an independent consultant and expert, providing legal analyses and opinions, and also policy texts. She has held a number major consultancies with various intergovernmental bodies (within the United Nations (UN), the Council of Europe, and OSCE), leading human rights NGOs, and technology companies on thematic issues - such as the human rights responsibilities of social media platforms, the regulation of harmful content (particularly disinformation and hate speech), freedom of expression and climate misinformation, and the right to health-related information - as well as on national legislation, including, recently proposed amendments to the criminal code of Ukraine on criminal liability during martial law for offences relating to the use of information and communication systems. 

As a consultant, Parmar worked with the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect in New York and many other UN entities and field offices around the world to develop and draft two key UN texts in the realm of hate speech, specifically the UN Strategy and Action Plan on Hate Speech: Detailed Guidance on Implementation for UN Field Presences and the Guidance Note on Addressing and Countering COVID-19 Related Hate Speech. She also devised and delivered training courses on international human rights law on freedom of expression and the responsibilities of the private sector to the members and staff of the Oversight Board following its establishment and before it issued its first decisions and policy advisory opinions.   

Parmar has served as an independent member (appointed by the Council of Europe Secretary-General) and Co-Rapporteur of the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on Combating Hate Speech (ADI/MSI-DIS), co-drafting Recommendation CM/Rec(2022)16 of the Committee of Ministers to member States on combating hate speech which was adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 20 May 2022. She is on the Council of Europe's roster of experts on freedom of expression and the media, and freedom of access to information and is on the OSCE roster of experts on Media Freedom. As a consultant for the OSCE, she drafted a working paper on the impact of the Joint Declarations on Freedom of Expression, including a set of recommendations on how the texts could be better implemented by states, non-state actors, and OSCE institutions.

Parmar is a member of the academic constituency of the Global Network Initiative and an expert at Global Freedom of Expression at Columbia University.

Parmar holds law degrees from the LSE (LLB hons) and the EUI (PhD) in Florence, Italy, and has been Called to the Bar of England and Wales (Inner Temple). She was born and raised in Cardiff.

News articles

UK Foreign Office role for Cardiff international human rights law scholar

12 September 2022

A senior law lecturer is part of a group of academics drafted into UK government departments to assist in addressing contemporary challenges facing the UK.