​Rocco Bellanova successfully defended his PhD thesis at the Université Saint-Louis - Bruxelles on Tuesday 5 May. His thesis is titled The politics of data protection: what does data protection do? and analyzes the powers and politics of data protection, in particular in relation to the deployment of security technologies based on passenger data. The PhD is awarded jointly by the Centre de Recherche en Science Politique (CReSPo) of the Université Saint-Louis and the Law, Science, Technology and Society (LSTS) of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. 

Jury:
Prof. Dr. Denis Duez – Supervisor
Prof. Dr. Paul De Hert – Supervisor
Prof. Dr. Olivier Paye – Co-supervisor
Prof. Dr. Serge Gutwirth – Co-supervisor
Prof. Dr. Marieke de Goede
Prof. Dr. Antoinette Rouvroy
Prof. Dr. Frédéric Nils – President

​At PRIO, Rocco is currently working on three EU FP7 funded projects: IRISS (on surveillance and resilience in democratic societies); ETTIS​ (on European security trends and threats); PACT​ (on public perception of privacy and security).​