UCL MA in Publishing student Sarah Blankfield (2010-11) has won first prize for her dissertation in the annual Association for Publishing Education dissertation competition. All UK universities offering publishing education degree programmes are invited to submit their best dissertation from under and post-graduate courses.

Sarah’s dissertation ”Towards a Digital Spine: What methods are UK and US publishers, and their representative bodies, using to tackle the growing challenge of e-book piracy’ addressed perhaps one of the greatest concerns of rightsholders today. The dissertation considered The Publishers Association Copyright Infringement Portal and Digital Rights Management in its various forms.

Sarah’s dissertation  has now been published in the journal Publishing Research Quarterly DOI 10.1007/s12109-012-9265-4.