Vanessa Franssen

University of Liège

Vanessa Franssen is a Professor at the University of Liège (Belgium), where she co-directs the Service de droit pénal, de procédure pénale et de droit pénal international. She is also an Affiliated Senior Researcher at the Institute of Criminal Law of KU Leuven. She specialises in cybercrime, EU criminal law, economic and financial criminal law, national and comparative criminal law and criminal procedure. She has specific experience in comparative and interdisciplinary research (e.g. data protection law) and is particularly interested in the impact of new technologies (including AI and cryptocurrencies) on criminal law and criminal procedure.

Professor Franssen is the author of many publications and conference papers. For instance, she co-edited a collective volume on criminal law in the digital era (Société numérique et droit penal. Belgique, France, Europe, Larcier, 2019), published a book chapter on the e-Evidence Regulation (2024) and co-authored two book chapters on data retention (2022 and 2025). In 2025, she co-edited the Cambridge Handbook on Digital Evidence in Criminal Investigations (Cambridge University Press).

She has been consulted on several occasions by European and national policymakers, e.g. on issues regarding e-evidence, data retention and digital justice. At present, she is a member of the High-Level Forum on the Future of EU Criminal Justice.

Previously, Prof. Franssen studied Law and Romance Languages at KU Leuven/Panthéon-Sorbonne University of Paris 1. She was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Michigan Law School (USA, 2011-2012). After obtaining her PhD at KU Leuven, (2013), she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg (2014-2015).