Dr. Els de Busser is Assistant Professor Cybersecurity Governance at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University. Her expertise lies on the intersection between justice, security and technology. This translates into a multidisciplinary approach in teaching as well as research. Els’ PhD in Law from Ghent University, Belgium, was awarded with the 2014 Siracusa Prize for Young Penalists by the International Association for Penal Law (AIDP-IAPL) and the Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights.

Els teaches courses at Leiden University on a broad range of topics including digital justice, data protection and privacy, legal aspects of cyber security and European criminal law. She regularly develops new courses as well as professional trainings and MOOCs for public officials, executives in the technology industry and judges of national courts. She was one of the three nominees for the Leiden University Teaching Award in 2021.

In 2021 Els was awarded a research grant by NWO (Dutch Scientific Research Fund) as the Principal Investigator for the interdisciplinary project Cyber Security by Integrated Design (the C-SIDE project) that aims to develop a methodology for software developers for integrating the technical and non-technical aspects of cyber security into new software systems. She is also a researcher in The Hague Program for International Cyber Security and has published articles in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Cyber Policy, German Law Journal, Cahiers Politie studies (in Dutch), Security and Human Rights, European Integration and Democracy and Utrecht Law Review.

Els is a member of the Standing Committee of Experts on International Immigration, Refugee and Criminal Law (also known as the Meijers Committee) and often contributes to the opinions published by the Committee on topics related to privacy, data protection, cyber security and law enforcement.