What is the ORCHID Project?
The European Union’s Digital Rulebook has undergone intensive transformation over the past decade, with the introduction of new chapters, such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) or the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act). Though these frameworks have different objectives and scopes, they inevitably interact, creating the need for research to assess whether they complement or contradict each other. The stakes are even higher when the rights of vulnerable groups, particularly children, are affected. Using a children’s rights-based approach, the ORCHID project aims to map and critically assess the interdependencies, overlaps, and potential frictions between these regimes, ultimately proposing interpretative pathways that support a more coherent and rights-respecting application of the EU legal framework in practice.
About Us
Laura Drechsler
Principal Investigator
Laura studied law at the University of Vienna and KU Leuven, earning an LL.M. in Public International and European Law with a thesis on freedom of information and intellectual property. After graduating in 2015, she worked for the Austrian Chamber of Civil Law Notaries in Brussels, specialising in EU law and policymaking.
In 2017, she joined the Brussels Privacy Hub at VUB’s LSTS Research Group and received an individual FWO grant in 2018 for her doctoral research on data subject rights in international personal data transfers, which she defended in 2022.
Since January 2024, Laura has been Assistant Professor of Data Law at KU Leuven and a researcher at the Belgian State Archives within a FED-tWIN project on EU data protection and data law from a human rights perspective. She is also assistant editor of the Oxford University Press Commentary on the GDPR (2020, 2021, and upcoming 2nd edition), teaches at KU Leuven, and regularly speaks at international conferences and podcasts.
Elora Fernandes
Postdoctoral Researcher
Elora Fernandes is a Brazilian and Portuguese postdoctoral researcher at the KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP), specialising in children’s rights in the digital environment. She currently works on the ORCHID project under the supervision of Prof. Laura Drechsler, examining the interplay between the GDPR and other pieces of the EU Digital Rulebook from a children’s rights perspective.
At CiTiP, Elora co-chairs the Privacy and Data Protection cluster, coordinates the Children’s Rights in the Digital Environment subcluster, supervises students, teaches guest lectures, and contributes to research management and funding initiatives. She also advises the Flemish Ministry of Education on AI in education and serves on the steering committee of imec’s NOVAI programme.
Emma Aldibs
Doctoral Researcher
Emma Aldibs is a Doctoral Researcher at the Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP), KU Leuven, Belgium. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in European Law from Maastricht University and Master’s degrees in Law and Technology (Utrecht University) and Art Law (Luiss Guido Carli University). She previously interned at several law firms and worked as a research fellow at the VUB, consistently engaging in areas where law and technology intersect. Currently, her research focuses on the intersection of children’s rights and the EU digital rulebook.