Sofie Royer

Sofie Royer is a professor of human rights law at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and a research expert at the Centre for IT and IP Law (KU Leuven). She obtained a Master’s degree in Law at KU Leuven in 2014. After a brief interlude as a lawyer, she has been a research and teaching assistant at the Institute of Criminal Law (KU Leuven). In 2020, Sofie defended her PhD thesis on criminal seizure in a digitizing world, which has been published as a book, Strafrechtelijk beslag: digiproof en (multi)functioneel. She has been a guest professor criminal law at UAntwerpen (2022-24), a guest professor at ULiège (2022-25), and a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg (2018). 

Sofie's main research focuses on the impact of new technologies on human rights in the field of (cyber)security. Her research interests include topics as cybercrime, hate speech on social media and freedom of expression, deepfakes and deepnudes, data driven criminal investigations, data retention, encryption, the use of artificial intelligence in criminal justice, the protection of professional privilege, the (de)criminalisation of soft drugs ... She is involved in various national and international research projects and has coordinated important policy studies. Sofie is the editor-in-chief of Tijdschrift voor Strafrecht, a Belgian journal on criminal law, and an editor of Computerrecht, a Belgian-Dutch journal on ICT-law.

Currently, Sofie is teaching the courses Veiligheid, terrorisme en mensenrechten (VUB) and ICT-recht (KU Leuven). Previously, she has been teaching various courses on criminal (procedural) law, such as Criminaliteitsvormen en misdrijven (KU Leuven), Het strafproces (KU Leuven), Strafrechtelijk sanctierecht (KU Leuven, UAntwerpen), Bijzonder strafrecht (UAntwerpen), and Séminaire de lecture (ULiège).

Sofie is a regular speaker at and organizer of conferences and seminars. She is often interviewed by journalists on topics of security, human rights, and new technologies (find an overview here). Moreover, she contributes to making the law more accessible to a broad audience by means of a podcast called #Tussenderegels.

Find Sofie on Bluesky @sofieroyer.be, X @SofieRoyer, or visit her personal website.