Aim

PRIVACY’s scholarly goals are grounded in the overall aim to launch privacy studies as a new re­search field.

We aim to develop:

  • systematized historical knowledge of dynamics that shape, induce or curb privacy in society.
  • an interdisciplinary method equipped to grasp such dy­namics.
  • a strong and vibrant international research environment dedicated to high-profile historical research and equipped to incite a much broader investigation of privacy.

PRIVACY brings together the fields of Church History, Architectural History, Legal History, Social History the History of Ideas in a novel interdisciplinary approach based on disciplinary integrationand site-based analysis.

Our principal focus rests with the period 1500-1800. The wider aim of PRIVA­CY is, however, to mobilize knowledge of past notions of privacy as a resource that can help decode the intrica­cies of present concerns related to the indi­vidual’s place in society