Victor carried out his master’s thesis entitled: “Policy in Socio-Technical Transition: The Case of Consumer Privacy Protection for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in Retail” in Europe at the Science Technology and Policy Studies (STePS) department of the School of Management and Governance at the University of Twente. In doing his research, Victor worked together with Dr. Ellen van Oost and Dr. Stefan Kuhlmann. In addition, Victor visited the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GaTech) in Atlanta in the United States for seven months. At GaTech Victor had the opportunity to work with Dr. Hans Klein, a specialist in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) policy.

In his research, Victor focused on understanding the innovation policy dynamics of an emerging technology. Specifically, Victor performed a case study of the emerging application of the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology on consumer products in the European retail sector. In essence, RFID is an emerging Information and Communication Technology (ICT) that enables the wireless identification, tracking, and tracing of entities, such as objects, animals, and even humans. As RFID is applied on consumer products, it could facilitate ubiquitous consumer surveillance. This because RFID carries the potential for covertly tracking consumers by means of tracking their purchases outside and inside the retail store. The key issue with RFID therefore is the unprecedented risk to violate the privacy of consumers.

In order to get the empirical data to inform his research Victor visited the RFID pilot projects that are undertaken by the METRO Group, the biggest retailer in Germany. Since 2003, the METRO Group has been pioneering the application of RFID under real-life conditions on individual groceries in the supermarket and on garments in the department store. In addition, Victor interviewed actors from organizations that have influence on the policy processes and policy outcomes in the so-called policy-making arenas for consumer privacy regulations of RFID. Finally, Victor attended a public policy conference and a business conference on RFID to get in-depth insights in the latest policy developments and the latest state of the RFID technology respectively.

In his thesis, Victor enabled to conceptualize the emerging regulations for protecting consumer privacy for the emerging application of RFID in the European retail sector. This by conceptualizing it in terms of an emerging governance regime that consists of connected multi-level and multi-stakeholder policy-making arenas in which there are different policy processes yielding policy outcomes for collective action. Victor introduced the concept of a policy niche to conceptualize this emerging regulatory capability for protecting consumer privacy for the emerging application of RFID in the European retail sector.

In conclusion, the endeavor of conducting multidisciplinary research in an international context stimulated Victor to pursue a career in academic research. Hence, Victor decided to enroll in the Ph.D. program in Public Policy at GaTech.

The photograph below depicts Victor and his graduation committee that was taken during his graduation on the 25th of June 2009. From left to right the photograph depicts: Dr. Ellen van Oost, Victor, Dr. Hans Klein, and Dr. Stefan Kuhlmann.