If someone had told me a few years ago that I would leave behind an active legal career in Greece to research biometric privacy in the Metaverse, I probably would not have believed them.
At the time, my world was very different. My days revolved around courtrooms, legal files, clients, deadlines and the constant intensity that comes with practicing law. Starting as a partner and resulting in my own law firm, I spent nearly a decade representing clients before greek courts, navigating complex cases and building my professional identity as a lawyer.
And yet, somewhere along the way, a different kind of question started following me.
Not a legal question.
A rather.. technological one.
When curiosity starts becoming impossible to ignore
While completing my Master’s degree in Law and Informatics, I became increasingly fascinated by the speed at which technology was transforming society. Every new digital development seemed to raise deeper questions about privacy, governance, ethics and human autonomy.
The more I explored these issues, the more I realised something important:
Technology was evolving much faster than our ability to regulate (or even fully understand) it.
Questions kept staying in my mind:
What happens when personal data becomes continuous rather than occasional?
How can people meaningfully consent in environments designed around constant data collection?
Who actually shapes privacy in digital spaces: the law, technology companies, developers, or users themselves?
And what happens when our bodies, behaviours, emotions and movements become data?
At first, these questions lived quietly in the background of my legal work. But over time, curiosity became something much stronger.
It became a direction.
Leaving legal practice behind and starting again
Making the transition from legal practice into academia was not an easy decision and even now remains extremely difficult in some cases.
Law had been my profession, my structure and in many ways, my comfort zone. Courtrooms teach you to think quickly, argue clearly, and search for concrete outcomes. Research, however, asks something very different from you. It asks you to slow down, embrace uncertainty, and sit with complexity for long periods of time.
When I began my PhD as a Marie Curie Fellow at Durham University Business School, I suddenly found myself intellectually, professionally, and personally in an entirely new environment
And honestly?
Of course, it was exciting, but at the same time it was terrifying as well.
There is something deeply humbling about becoming a student again after years of professional experience. Very quickly, you realise that academia is not really about “having all the answers.” Instead, it is about learning how to ask better, deeper, and more meaningful questions.You have to doubt yourself so to make progress what in research is called “reflection”!
But before reaching that realisation, there are often moments filled with frustration, self-doubt, and uncertainty. You begin questioning yourself constantly: Am I good enough? Can I succeed in this new environment? Can I do this as well as others?
The answer is yes! Absolutely yes!
What I slowly learned is that growth takes time. Transitioning into academia is not simply about intelligence or expertise, it is about patience, resilience and allowing yourself the space to learn again. Knowledge does not arrive overnight. It develops gradually through reading, reflection, mistakes, conversations and continuous exploration.
Sometimes, the hardest part is not the research itself, but trusting yourself enough to remain present through the uncertainty until confidence slowly(really slowly!!!!) replaces fear.
Researching privacy in worlds that do not fully exist yet
Today, my research focuses on biometric privacy in immersive environments such as the Metaverse.
Unlike traditional digital systems, immersive technologies rely on continuous streams of biometric data to create realistic and interactive experiences. XR devices can collect information such as: eye movements, facial expressions, voice patterns, behavioural reactions, physiological responses and even emotional indicators.
What makes this especially fascinating (and concurrently concerning) is that this data is not collected once or occasionally. It is collected continuously!
Immersive technologies are not simply tools we “use.” They are environments we enter.
And this changes everything about how privacy works.
The deeper I moved into this research, the more I realised that privacy in the Metaverse is not shaped only by law. It is constantly negotiated between multiple actors: users, developers, companies, regulators, compliance experts, and technological systems themselves.
That is why my research adopts a multi-stakeholder perspective. I am interested not only in what biometric privacy is, but in how people understand it, interpret it, negotiate it and sometimes even redefine it entirely.
Academia changed the way I think
One of the biggest surprises of this journey has been how much academia transformed my mindset.
Legal practice trained me to search for solutions. Research taught me the importance of exploring complexity before rushing toward conclusions.
I also discovered how deeply interdisciplinary this field really is. My work now exists somewhere between law, technology, ethics, governance, business, innovation, and social theory. Some days I discuss regulation. Other days I discuss immersive design, AI systems, behavioural data, or platform governance.
And honestly, that intersection is exactly what makes this journey so rewarding.
The more I research emerging technologies, the more I understand that no single discipline can answer these questions alone.
The personal side of starting over
What people often do not talk about enough is the emotional side of changing professional direction.
Leaving behind an established legal career to move abroad and pursue a PhD meant stepping into uncertainty again. Academia can feel ambiguous in ways that professional life often does not. There are no immediate victories, no final answers and progress is often invisible for long periods of time.
But there is also something incredibly meaningful about allowing yourself to evolve.
This journey reminded me that professional identity does not have to remain fixed forever. Sometimes the questions we become curious about are powerful enough to completely reshape our path.
And sometimes, starting over is not really starting over at all.
It is simply continuing the same search for understanding just from a different perspective.
Looking ahead
Today, I increasingly see my role as building bridges between law, technology, innovation and society.
Because emerging technologies do not simply need regulation after problems appear. They need thoughtful conversations about governance, ethics, responsibility and human impact while they are still being shaped.
Looking back now, I do not see my transition from law to academia as leaving one world behind.
I see it as expanding it.
The courtroom taught me how systems affect people in practice.
Research allows me to explore how those systems are being built for the future.
And somewhere between the two, I found the work I was truly meant to do.