Andrea Wallace is an Associate Professor at the University of Exeter. She is Deputy Director of SCuLE and Co-Director of the GLAM-E Lab in partnership with the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy at NYU Law School.
Andrea has a PhD in Cultural Heritage Law from the University of Glasgow with the CREATe RCUK Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy in partnership with the National Library of Scotland. Andrea previously received an LLM in European Business Law from Radboud University in the Netherlands, a JD from DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is also a registered attorney with the Illinois State Bar in the United States.
Research Interests
Andrea works across multiple disciplines and specialties including intellectual property law, art and cultural heritage law, digital humanities, visual studies, and museum studies.
Andrea’s research focuses on intersections of art and cultural heritage with the digital realm and digital heritage management. Her research considers the impact of digital technologies on the preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of cultural heritage and the obstacles and opportunities presented by the digital realm. She frequently writes and presents on open culture and the impact that a claim to copyright in reproductions has on meaningful access to and reuse of cultural heritage in the public domain.
Some of Andrea’s previous projects include Display At Your Own Risk, a research-led exhibition experiment featuring digital surrogates of public domain works made available by cultural institutions around the world. Her work has been written about by Hyperallergic and curated in the group exhibition No Copyright Infringement Intended.
With Douglas McCarthy (Europeana), she manages the Survey of GLAM open access policy and practice, which collects data on open access from cultural institutions and organisations around the world. She currently serves as an active member of the Steering Group for the Europeana Copyright Community. Andrea has also served as a Fellow and Editorial Lead for Open GLAM Research with the Wikimedia Foundation. She regularly consults for the heritage sector on open access and digital collections management and manages a number of grant funded projects.
Select Outputs
A. Wallace. (2022) “A Culture of Copyright: A scoping study on open access to digital cultural heritage collections in the UK.” DOI
A. Wallace and E. Euler. (2020) “Revisiting Access to Cultural Heritage in the Public Domain: EU and International Developments.” IIC International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law 57(7), 823-55.
M. Pavis and A. Wallace. (2019) “Response to the 2018 Sarr-Savoy Report: Statement on Intellectual Property Rights and Open Access relevant to the digtiization and restitution of African Cultural Heritage and associated materials.” DOI
A. Wallace. “Mona Lisa.” In A History of Intellectual Property in 50 Objects, edited by Claudy Op den Kamp & Dan Hunter. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Top 10 Finalist, 2017 Rijksstudio Award. Pixel and Metadata Dress. Rijksmuseum, 2017.
A. Wallace and R. Deazley (eds). Display at Your Own Risk: an experimental exhibition of digital cultural heritage. CREATe, 2016.
Select Conference Appearances
“Display At Your Own Risk & Examining Multiples: Mona Lisa,” Roundtable on Empirical Methods in Intellectual Property, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Chicago, Illinois, 4-5 May 2018.
Keynote: “Access and the Digital Surrogate: Openness as a philosophy,” National Digital Forum Conference, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand, 20-21 November 2017.
“Performance Art and Copyright,” Art and Performance, National Galleries Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland, 30 September 2017.
Keynote: “Policies and Practices in Sharing Culture: Do it for the Users,” Sharing is Caring, Museum für Kunst und Gewerve Hamburg, Germany, 21 April 2017.
Select Media Appearances
“Access for Who?” Open Restitution Africa, July 2022.
BBC, “21st Century Mythologies,” BBC Documentaries, November 2020.
Museopunks, “Digitization is not neutral,” American Alliance of Museums, December 2019.
I. Macquisten, “UK museums’ right to charge image fees is called into question,” Art Newspaper, 28 November 2017.
C. Voon, “From Biblical Condoms to Blue Tile Contact Lenses, Putting the Rijksmuseum Collection to Unusual Uses,” Hyperallergic, 24 March 2017.
C. Voon, “How User-Friendly Are Museum Image Rights?,” Hyperallergic, 10 June 2016.
Email Andrea | Visit Andrea’s University of Exeter Law School Profile