My name is Olia Kanevskaia, a PhD Candidate at Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC) and Tilburg Law School, working on governance of standards development organizations in ICT and telecom sectors. More specifically, my research focuses on the institutional aspects of technological standardization, a multifaceted topic involving an interdisciplinary analysis of law, economics and political science. The ultimate aim of this project is to offer a law and economics perspective for assessing the legitimacy of standards developed in the shadow of governmental regulation by industry-driven bodies, and to suggest to what extent should the industry-driven organizations developing these standards be subject to legal scrutiny. I am currently in the last phase of my research, where I will substantiate the desk study conducted over the past two years with case studies, interviews and empirical analysis. Next to the governance of standards development organizations and procedural safeguards of standardization, I am interested in a broad range of topics, including technical trade barriers, sanctions and restrictive trade measures, rules of origin, EU preferential trade agreements, labelling practices and consumer protection, institutions and organizational economics.

I will be visiting the chair from 1 October 2017 to the end of December 2017 – please feel free to drop by for a chat!