Laurence Claeys has been teaching Communication Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel since 2012, and holds a PhD in Social Sciences (Communication Studies, UGent) and a MA in Sociology (UGent) and Gender Studies (University of Antwerp). She is also a senior researcher at SMIT Research Center ( http://smit.vub.ac.be ), in which she researches privacy, trust and risk provisions in the field of Internet-of-Things communication. Previously , she was part of the Ambient Media Applications research team of Alcatel - Lucent Bell Labs ( http://www.belllabs.be) in Antwerp, where she researched the role of end-user development tools, contextually aware systems and application-creation platforms. In this context, she also developed research methods and tools for interdisciplinary work with engineers, social scientists and designers in O & I environments. She has also worked for several years for gender and equal opportunities topics.

 Role of end-user development tools, contextually aware systems and application-creation platforms