Profile

Prof.dr. Bibi van den Berg has an MA and a PhD from Erasmus University’s Department of Philosophy. During her undergraduate degree and her PhD she specialised in philosophy of technology. After completing her PhD Van den Berg transferred to Tilburg University for a 3-year postdoc appointment at the Tilburg Institute of Law, Technology and Society. In January 2012 she transferred to Leiden University’s Law School, to join eLaw, the Center for Law & Digital Technologies as an assistant professor. Since the summer of 2015 Prof.dr. Van den Berg works at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), which is part of the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs in The Hague. She is head of the research group Cybersecurity Governance at this institute. Van den Berg’s research interests include:

• cybersecurity
• governance of security and safety
• regulating human behaviour through the use of technologies (techno-regulation and nudging)
• privacy and identity
• robotics and artificial intelligence

She teaches in Leiden University's Bachelor Security Studies and in the Executive Master Cyber Security (a joint program together with TU Delft and The Hague University of Applied Sciences). Van den Berg is a member of the Dutch Cyber Security Council, a Council that advises the Dutch Cabinet on how to improve cybersecurity in the Netherlands. She is also a member of the Board of Advisers for IT of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) of the Netherlands.

Research programmes and education

Prof.dr. Van den Berg is the head of the Cybersecurity Governance research group. This group conducts research around four different themes:

1. Key concepts in cybersecurity (conceptual analysis on concepts such as ‘cybersecurity’, ‘cybersafety’, ‘cyberespionage’, ‘cyber risks’ ‘hacktivism’ etc)
2. Governance & institutional design (on structures of/for governance, responsibilities and mandates, e.g. in relation to international cyber norms)
3. Strategies for governance & regulation (on the possibility, feasibility, impact and shape of government interventions and strategies, e.g. the role of techno-regulation or trust); and
4. New IT and cybersecurity (on the governance issues raised by the rise of new digital technologies).

Prof.dr. Van den Berg’s own research focuses predominantly on themes (1) and (3). Cybersecurity is a field that is characterised by a widespread attitude of hands-on, goal-directed problem-solving. This is a laudable approach, since there are significant cyber risks in a variety of domains the require a response. However, to solidify our approaches to making cyberspace more secure, we must also have consistent, carefully considered conceptual frameworks to address them and a proper academic understanding of the shape, form and depth of particular types of cybersecurity risks. Prof.dr. Van den Berg’s research focuses on this topic.

Second, her research focuses on the various strategies that companies, governments and designers use to influence human behaviour broadly, and more particularly in relation to cybersecurity. She has written extensively on techno-regulation and other regulatory strategies.