Lore Mergaerts obtained a Bachelor in Criminology (KU Leuven, 2011), a Master Forensics, Criminology and Law (Maastricht University, 2012) and a Master Legal psychology (Maastricht University, 2013). After four years of being a teaching assistant at the Leuven Institute of Criminology at KU Leuven (2012-2016), in 2021 she obtained her PhD. Her research focused on the vulnerability of suspects in criminal proceedings, which was funded by the Research Fund Flanders (FWO). After being a postdoctoral researcher at the Leuven Institute of Criminology and was a lecturer in forensic a legal psychology at the Department of Psychology, Education and Child Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam, since September 2023, she is a fulltime tenure track professor of criminological and legal psychology at the Leuven Institute of Criminology at KU Leuven. She teaches Legal psychology, Criminological psychology, Person oriented criminological interventions and coordinates the internships and seminar supporting students who intern within the field of the police and the judiciary.
She predominantly conducts research and publishes on suspect vulnerability in criminal proceedings and police questioning from a domestic Belgian and European perspective. Her main interests are the conceptualization and identification of vulnerability, police questioning practices, and the implementation of procedural safeguards throughout criminal proceedings, also focusing on the interplay between law and psychology. Her research builds on theoretical analyses as well as comparative and empirical insights
Outside of KU Leuven, she is a member the Centre for Policing and Security (CPS), which organizes conferences, workshops and trainings for the public and private security services. She is also a management committee member and lead of the working group on vulnerabilities within a recently started COST action Implemendez (https://implemendez.eu/).