Privacy Challenge Seminar: Family Secrecy and Privacy

With Associate Professor Karen Asta Arnfred Vallgårda, SAXO-Institute, University of Copenhagen.

About the Seminar:

Family Secrecy and Privacy

Every family has a skeleton in the closet, or so the saying goes. A dubious deed or a disgracing detail that is kept under wraps through more or less elaborate practices of secrecy. But what does this convey about the family and its relationship to society or the state? And how might a historical perspective help us better understand the nexus between the public and the private in contemporary society? The presentation introduces the collective research project The Politics of Family Secrecy, which examines practices of knowledge management related to different taboos in twentieth century Denmark, and reflects on the historical and contemporary connections between secrecy and privacy.

Karen Asta Arnfred Vallgårda’s research centers on political family and childhood history in the 19th and 20th centuries. She examines how people have organized their family life, how power is exercised in intimate relationships, and how such relationships have been shaped by shifting social, economic, political and legal circumstances.

About the Challenge Seminars:

PRIVACY hosts two Challenge Seminars each semester. Here, the PRIVACY’s research team join with invited experts on topics such as surveillance, privacy rights, medical ethics, work-life balance or social cohesion, in order to pose mutual research challenges.