Ola al Khatib is a PhD Candidate affiliated with the Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Administration of Justice of Utrecht University, supervised by Professor Nadya Purtova and Professor Rob Widdershoven. Her doctoral research is based on a combination of doctrinal and empirical research methods and has the following provisional title: Redesigning legal protection in view of the ‘algorithmic turn’ in Dutch social security decision-making: lessons from the combined perspective of legal regulatory theory and law and technology theory.
Ola holds an honours BA in 'Liberal Arts & Sciences: Global Challenges' and an LLB from Leiden University College The Hague respectively Leiden Law School. After having completed an LLM in Administrative and Constitutional Law from the latter in 2020 (cum laude), she embarked on a postgraduate LLM at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). At the LSE, she specialized in European public law as well as the (comparative) theory and philosophy of law (with distinction).
Ola al Khatib has presented her research at a number of (inter)national conferences, e.g. ICON-s, TILTing Perspectives, the 'Jonge VAR' (organized by the Dutch Association for Administrative Law), and the Dutch Constitutional Law Conference. She is also actively engaged with society, for example through her work for the Dutch non-profit organization Stichting Algorithm Audit, e.g. conducting an audit commissioned by the Dutch administrative authority allocating student benefits ('DUO') concerning the algorithmic detection process of misuse of college benefits.
