about

This site hosts information about prof.dr. Ronald Leenes, professor of regulation by technology at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society at Tilburg University, the Netherlands.

I am very fond of Ian Kerr and totally agree with his view on biographies. Consider the following flattery to Ian.

My teen years marked the beginning of the PC era. My uncle was, I guess, one of the first people to possess a Tandy TRS-80 microcomputer in the Netherlands. I was smitten by this new device and remember the first lessons in programming ‘It’s only logical Bessy’ or something similar. I sold my Ten Cate Windsurfer and obtained a TRS-80 myself. Being more of a Maker than a Hacker, I started messing with the hardware and that is where my choice for moving to Twente to study Electrical Engineering was made. Being a null in Math, that turned out not to be a smart move and I switched to Public Administration and Public Policy.

Here is was persuaded by this man not only to focus on the new field of informatisation and public administration, but also take up social science methods. I graduated with one of the Dutch pioneers in Artificial Intelligence and Law on legal knowledge representation.

Next, I started my PhD research – becoming a scientist was like my only option in life –, in the Sociology department. Had this worked out, you would not be reading this. After a while I switched to the department of public Law and under supervision of the prototype of a legal scholar, I developed into what I am today.

Focus is still difficult for me, and hence I am all over the place. Not only I wander from research domain into research domain, but also I can’t keep my hands of electronics, still waste time on computer programming and build the odd thing or two as you can see elsewhere on this site.

more to come…

More information, including contact details, can be found at my TILT page.

If you insist, here is my full cv.