Başak Bak

Dr Başak Bak is an experienced academic, having worked as a Lecturer in Law for ten years at Ankara University, and as an associate professor of law for two years at Izmir University of Economics. Before this, she was a solicitor in a top-tier international law firm in Istanbul. She is also a qualified barrister, registered with the Istanbul Bar Association. 

Başak practices as a legal consultant specialising in intellectual property law (IP) and data protection and privacy law. She holds two separate PhD degrees in these fields, respectively. She is also a Certified International Privacy Manager (CIPM), Certified International Privacy Professional/Europe (CIPP/E) and an active member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP).

Following her LLB studies, Başak successfully obtained her first LLM degree at Ankara University, followed by her PhD degree (summa cum laude) in IP law in 2015. While she was studying for her first PhD degree, she was a visiting lecturer at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen for two terms (fully funded), as her doctoral thesis was mainly influenced by the German approach to copyright law. After being awarded her doctoral thesis (without corrections), she obtained another master's degree in UK and US copyright law at King’s College London in order to develop her expertise in the common law world. In 2017, Başak was awarded a grant of £29,000 by the British Council within the framework of the prestigious Newton Fund Researcher Link Workshop Grant to organise an international IP event based on a proposal she developed. This was impressively the first project awarded in the field of law.

Başak obtained her second PhD (without corrections) from the University of Reading in genetic data privacy, a significant yet underexplored area within data protection. Her research earned her the prestigious Modern Law Review Scholarship. 

Başak has been working as a full-time Law Lecturer at the University of Reading since 2020, where she convenes the Intellectual Property and Data Protection Law modules across both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at Reading Law School. She has a track record of publications in IP law, AI and data protection as well as global civil law topics. She published a book on copyright and two book chapters on AI and deepfakes. Currently, she is publishing more widely on the aspects of data protection law and is open to collaboration opportunities in GenAI, intellectual property, and data privacy.