Laura Neiva

Laura Neiva has a degree in Criminology from the Faculty of Law of the University of Porto (2017), a master’s degree in Crime, Difference and Inequality from the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Minho (2019), and a PhD in Sociology, also from the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Minho (2024).

From July 2018 to March 2021, she worked as a junior researcher on the ‘Exchange’ Project – Forensic Geneticists and the Transnational Exchange of DNA data in the EU: Engaging Science with Social Control, Citizenship and Democracy, funded by the European Research Council (Contract No. [648608]), led by Helena Machado and based at the Centre for Communication and Society Studies (CECS), Institute of Social Sciences (ICS) of the University of Minho, Braga, Portugal.

In September (2020) she published the book ‘Big Data in criminal investigation: challenges and expectations in the European Union’, Editora Húmus (available at http://repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/handle/1822/67004).

From 2021 to 2024 she carried out her PhD research in Sociology, entitled ‘Expectations of police officers about Big Data in the policing and criminal investigation system in Portugal’ at the Centre for Communication and Society Studies, at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Minho, having benefited from a PhD scholarship (ref 2020.04764.BD), promoted by the Foundation for Science and Technology, a highly competitive call, which aims to support researchers to develop their PhD research.

Her research interests centre on the Social Studies of Science and Technology, new criminal investigation technologies, Big Data, Surveillance Studies, policing and expectations. Specifically, it explores topics around expectations and imaginaries of Big Data in criminal investigation and policing, social inequalities, criminalisation, criminal suspicion and the social, ethical and legal issues of using technologies in criminal investigation and policing, aiming to understand how expectations around Big Data can impact on law enforcement, criminal justice and police agencies.