Dr. H.L. Janssen

Heleen Janssen is a researcher at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam (2020-). She holds a PhD in law (Maastricht University, 2003). Her research at IViR focuses on centralized and decentralized data governance infrastructures; she considers the potential of data management and computing infrastructures, and their legal, regulatory and policy implications. Her current projects revolve around data intermediaries (e.g., data trusts, data commons, personal information management systems). As most recent achievement, Heleen was awarded, with the Faculty of Natural Sciences/Institute for Informatics and with support of the municipality of Amsterdam, a Midsize Grant from the University of Amsterdam for her interdisciplinary research project on business-to-government (B2G) data sharing through a data intermediary.

Heleen is also affiliated researcher at the Compliant and Accountable Systems Research Group (CompAcctSys) at the Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge (2018-). For the academic year 2022-2023, Heleen was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS/KNAW) in Amsterdam. Besides her academic work, Heleen was appointed member of the independent Advisory Committee on Data Protection of the municipality of Amsterdam (2021-, CPA).

From 2004 - 2018 Heleen worked as legal policy adviser and legislator at the Constitutional Affairs and Legislation Department at the Dutch Ministry of the Interior on matters relating to human rights and emerging technologies. Among her key responsibilities were lead authorship of the modernization of the Dutch constitutional right to communication secrecy (2012-2017), the initiation of the project “fundamental rights and algorithms” (2017), and the negotiations on behalf of the Netherlands regarding the modernization of the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (Council of Europe, 2012-2017).