Daniela Gandorfer

Daniela Gandorfer is an Assistant Professor at University of Westminster Law School and serves as Emerging Tech & Innovation Systems Lead at the Institute for Healthy Urban Living. She is also deputy director of the Westminster Law and Theory Lab and founder of the Logische Phantasie Lab, a non-profit organization dedicated to ethical approaches toward normativity at the intersection of climate change, political reorganization, and digital technologies.

Her educational background includes a PhD from Princeton University, postdoctoral positions at Princeton University and UC Santa Cruz, and studies at UC Berkeley, Utrecht University, Kent Law School, University of Klagenfurt, University of Vienna, NYU, and The New School. She is currently completing an executive MSc in Finance at the London School of Economics.

Gandorfer's research focuses on emerging technologies—such as Web3, blockchain, AI, and immersive systems—and their role in reshaping governance and normativity. She explores how legal authority is moving beyond traditional institutions toward decentralized, private, hybrid, and community-based systems, investigating alternative models that reimagine value generation through ethically grounded, ecologically responsive, and socially inclusive approaches.

Her scholarly publications demonstrate a consistent focus on the intersection of legal theory, technology governance, and decentralized systems. The articles reveal a progression from theoretical explorations of legal philosophy to practical applications of blockchain in governance, with increasing attention to ecological and social justice dimensions in her most recent work.

• 2021 ASciNA Young Scientist Award
• World Omisiri Award
• Vienna Blockchain Awards (Overall Winner, Best Smart Technology, Best Sustainable Technology)
• Vienna Content Award
• Vienna Award 2022 and 2023
• Austrian Blockchain Award 2024

As an educator, Gandorfer supervises doctoral researchers like Zoe Wintersol (working on copyright for video games) and teaches courses including Law and Technology LLM, Future of Law: Emerging Normativities, Blockchain and Law, and Law and Technoscientific Expertise. Her funded research includes the UKRI project 'Aerobiome Dynamics and Human Health Implications in Urban Green and Blue Spaces' (2024). She leads initiatives such as 'de.RtB - A Decentralized Right to Breathe' and 'de.WRs - Decentralized Water Rights,' which have received multiple awards and recognition in international media.