PhD Viva: Jan Tolsdorf succeeds in Göttingen

In his dissertation project, Tolsdorf deals with the problem that employers are processing more and more personal data about their own employees in a digitalised working environment. Employees are not always aware of this and there is often a lack of transparency and know-how on the topic of data protection. In his dissertation, Jan Tolsdorf sheds light on employees' perceptions of privacy rights as well as their perceptions and expectations regarding the processing of their personal data. In addition, he shows ways in which employees who themselves have to process personal data of their colleagues can be supported in handling this data in a data protection-compliant manner. The results of his work provide a basis for the design and implementation of data protection measures that incorporate the views, expectations and abilities of employees.

His dissertation project was carried out as part of a cooperation between Prof. Luigi Lo Iacono's Data and Application Security Group at the Institute for Cyber Security & Privacy in the Department of Computer Science at H-BRS and Professor Delphine Reinhardt's Computer Security and Privacy Research Group at Göttingen University. Here, Jan Tolsdorf attended the PhD programme in Computer Science at the Georg-August University School of Science.

Initially, he will remain with the Institute for Cyber Security & Privacy of the Department of Computer Science as a research assistant in Professor Lo Iacono's research group. Afterwards, he can imagine both an academic and a private sector career. 

For those who are still at the beginning of their doctorate, he has the following advice: