Privacy Studies Podcast

Season 5 follows the discussions of the symposium PRIVACY AND DEATH: Past and Present, which took place at the University of Copenhagen and online between October 12 and 13, 2023. The event aimed to bring to the fore the discussions of what kind of privacy, if any, we have given to our dead in different cultural and historical contexts. In this season of the podcast, we will hear presentations by historians, archaeologists, sociologists, and other experts. The symposium and this season of the Privacy Studies Podcast is organized and produced by Felicia Fricke and Natacha Klein Käfer.

Season 1-4 is produced and hosted by Natália da Silva Perez. In the podcast Natália talks to guests about privacy from a historical perspective. Nevertheless, invited scholars come from a range of disciplines beyond history, including law, social and computer sciences, communication, and philosophy. Lectures and seminars from the Centre for Privacy Studies are also featured in season 1-4 of this podcast.

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Each episode is accompanied by a transcript for accessibility (The transcripts are machine generated and may contain typos).

Season 5: Privacy and Death


1. An Uneasy Relationship Between Post-mortem Privacy and the Law – Presentation by Dr. Edina Harbinja (Aston University, UK)

In this episode, Dr. Harbinja examines the developments of the theoretical and legal conceptions of post-mortem privacy. In her earlier work, she examined the relationship between privacy, dignity and autonomy to identify theoretical grounding for post-mortem privacy as an extension of privacy and autonomy after death. In her later research, the author transforms post-mortem privacy into a new concept of postmortal privacy. This concept is based on philosophical conceptions of informational body, social theories of digital immortality and the technological development of AI. The concept offers a novel normative framework for developing policy and law to address the uneasy relationship between post-mortem privacy and the law.

Listen to the episode here.

Download the transcript of the episode here.

2. Angels off the Record: Public Intercession in Hungarian Private Judgment Frescoes – Presentation by Dr. Edina Eszenyi (Maritime Training Academy, UK)

After the 1300s, the theme of the Last Judgment as the fate of mankind gave way to a new interest in the fate of the individual in funerary traditions. Compositions now depicted earthly dramas at the deathbed of the dying person, with supernatural beings crowding around the bedside. In this episode, Dr. Eszenyi analyses the role of this public intercession in private judgment compositions through the examples of two frescoes from medieval Hungary and present-day Slovakia. Both frescoes encompass an inherent duality between public and private. While they represent people dying in private, the creation of the artworks has made these moments fully public. Dr. Eszenyi explores what private judgment compositions can reveal about the changing notion of privacy over time.

Listen to the episode here.

Download the transcript of the episode here.

3. The Mourn and Lament: Women Dwelling Between the Private Torment and the Social Expectations in Rural Albania – Presentation by Dr. Esmeralda Agolli (University of Tirana, Albania)

The death of a family member, partner or friend comprises quite a traumatic legacy with a definitive impact in the life of those left behind. Beyond the emotions and torment, in rural Albania, the passing is accompanied by a variety of rites, traditions, beliefs and expectations. In this episode, Dr. Agolli, focuses on ethnographic evidence from rural Albania, deals with the extent to which women become the only bearers of honor, respect, and sorrow, leaving behind their private torment. While trying to fulfill these social expectations through dress codes, commemorations, and elongated lament, they are not given the chance to overcome their pain and sorrow. Instead, they become a living memory of their lost loved ones.

Listen to the episode here.

Download the transcript of the episode here.

4. The Afterlife of an “Emember” – Decoloniality and Privacy in Gergely Péterfy’s novel The Stuffed Barbarian – Presentation by Dr. Eszter Ureczky (University of Debrecen, Hungary)

Gergely Péterfy’s The Stuffed Barbarian (2014) is a postmodern Hungarian novel, a fictional biography of Angelo Soliman, an enslaved man who later achieved prominence in Viennese society. However, when he died, his body was taken to the Museum of Natural History in Vienna and exhibited there until the building burned down in 1848. In this presentation, Dr. Ureczky discusses what ethical behaviour posterity can offer to Soliman’s body once it had been irredeemably deprived of its privacy, using a medical humanities approach to explore historical and literary perspectives. By approaching the novel as an example of historiographic metafiction and introducing postcolonial theories of subjectivity, it can be read as a symbolic funeral or homage to Soliman’s body.

Listen to the episode here.

Download the transcript of the episode here.

5. The New Frontiers of Postmortem Privacy: Negotiating the Research Ethics of Human Remains in the Era of the Third Science Revolution in Archaeology – Presentation by Professor Liv Nilsson Stutz and Dr. Rita Peyroteo Stjerna (Linnæus University, Sweden)

In the past 20 years, we have witnessed an impressive development in laboratory methods to investigate archaeological human remains – “the Third Science Revolution.” While this has fundamental implications for research, very little has been said about how it relates to concepts such as privacy, dignity, and ethics. A lot of the information now accessible addresses aspects of an individual’s life that could be considered private. In this episode, Prof. Stutz and Dr. Stjerna discuss several case studies that reveal the ethical challenges relating to potentially sensitive information, for example, the genomic analysis of Beethoven’s hair. If we are to harness the potential of new methods, we must also develop a professional ethics that acknowledges the complexity of human remains as objects of science and as lived lives.

Listen to the episode here.

Download the transcript of the episode here.

6. Dynamics of Privacy and Death in Nigeria – Presentation by Dr. Lucky Igohosa Ugbudian (Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu-Alike, Nigeria)

The privacy associated with death in precolonial and colonial Nigeria has been gradually tampered within recent years. In this episode, Dr. Ugbydian analyses why this shift occurred and its implications. While in precolonial and colonial Nigeria the burial of a person elicited tears, secrecy, fear, privacy, sober reflection, and a collective sense of loss, irrespective of social status and age, in recent years, some Nigerians have tended to have overworked these aspects. Elaborate burials and the use of digital media have led treasurer hunters to attack and vandalise graves in search of expensive items, denying the dead their well-deserved privacy and rest.

Listen to the episode here.

Download the transcript of the episode here.

7. Privacy and Death in the Urban Spaces of Izmir: Urban Interventions toward Cemeteries in the 19th and 20th Centuries – Presentation by Selvihan Kurt (İstanbul Technical University, Turkey)

The Ottoman port of Izmir was one of the cities that experienced urban expansion as a result of integrating into the world economy in the 18th and 19th centuries, requiring a better infrastructure and influenced by Enlightenment hygiene ideals. The cemeteries were targeted for construction during this expansion, and new intramural burials were prohibited as a way to prevent disease. During these projects, the cemeteries of Christians, Muslims, and Jews were targeted despite protests. In this episode, Selvihan Kurt focuses on how the sacredness and privacy of these cemeteries were approached during this period, examining how local actors such as governors and religious leaders were effective in violating privacy or negotiating it.

Listen to the episode here.

Download the transcript of the episode here.

8. End-of-Life Rites in Ancient Art – Presentation by Dr. Vassilka Nikolova (Medical University - Sofia, Bulgaria)

Greek rituals have shaped modern European identity and traditions in many spheres of life. Gravestones and offerings are a vast resource for gaining knowledge not only about the burial rituals, but also about daily and private life in Greek society. Life was viewed as a preparation for the afterlife, and death was not to be feared. Philosophers regarded the body as an obstacle to the search for knowledge and meaning, and the pursuit of bodily pleasures was considered the root of all evil in society. These ideas laid the basis for European moral values. Embracing all these concepts, Greek burial rituals were mainly the duty of the family with distinct gender roles and phases.

Listen to the episode here.

Download the transcript of the episode here.

9. Exposing Some Funerary Culture and Obnoxious Widowhood Practices against Nigerian Womenfolk: The Need for Cultural Review – Presentation by Egbule Philip Onyekachukwu (University of Delta, Nigeria)

In recent times, the issue of traditional harmful practices and violence against women/girls has taken centre stage in Nigeria. These traditional harmful practices include obnoxious widowhood practices (rites) against Nigerian women. Widowhood practices are the rites performed for a woman after the death of her husband. Such practices have devastating physical, psychological, economic and intellectual consequences on women. They reinforce the “inferior” status of women in society and continue to violate their rights, and this has serious implications for the actualization of the gender equality agenda in society, as well as the economic development agenda. In this episode, Egbule Philip Onyekachukwu examines this and proposes some ways forward, including the positive role of education and social media.

Listen to the episode here.

Download the transcript of the episode here.

Season 4


The Portuguese Hebrew Nation in the Dutch Republic Debate on the Slave Trade - Interview with Yehonatan Elazar-DeMota

Yehonatan Elazar-DeMota is a rabbi and legal historian who specializes on the legal consciousness of the Portuguese Nation, an early modern Sephardic Jewish Community who came to live throughout the Western World in the wake of 1492. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. In this interview, we discuss his book Nação Legal Consciousness and its Contribution to the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic Debate on Slavery and the Slave Trade, where he explores the contributions of the Sephardim to legal-political discussions on ius naturae et gentium in early modern Amsterdam.

Listen to the podcast episode here: The Portuguese Hebrew Nation in the Dutch Republic Debate on the Slave Trade - Interview with Yehonatan Elazar-DeMota
Download the PDF Transcript of The Portuguese Hebrew Nation in the Dutch Republic Debate on the Slave Trade - Interview with Yehonatan Elazar-DeMota

Cunegonde Interrupts a Baptism Ceremony - Interview with Benjamin Kaplan

Ben Kaplan is a professor of Dutch History at UCL, with a comparative research profile focusing on religious history in early modern Europe. My colleague Johannes Ljungberg joins me as co-host in this interview about Ben's book Cunegonde's Kidnapping: A Story of Religious Conflict in the Age of Enlightenment. We discuss religious difference in interfaith marriages in the late 18th century, including lack of privacy within extended families.

Listen to the podcast episode here: Cunegonde Interrupts a Baptism Ceremony - Interview with Benjamin Kaplan
Download the PDF Transcript of Cunegonde Interrupts a Baptism Ceremony - Interview with Benjamin Kaplan

The Poison Trials - Interview with Alisha Rankin

Alisha Rankin is an associate professor of History at Tufts University. In this interview, recorded in the spring of 2021, Natacha Klein Käfer joins me as co-host to talk to Alisha about her book The Poison Trials : Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science.

Listen to the podcast episode here: The Poison Trials - Interview with Alisha Rankin
Download the PDF Transcript of The Poison Trials - Interview with Alisha Rankin

Season 3


Financial Accountability in France during the Reign of Louis XIV - Interview with Jacob Soll

Jacob Soll is Professor of Philosophy, History and Accounting at the University of Southern California. In this episode recorded in the summer of 2020, we talk about financial auditing practices, state secrets, and tensions between state transparency and state security during the old regime. Check out two of his books that focus on these topics: The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations (2014), and The Information Master (2009).

Listen to the podcast episode here: Financial Accountability in France during the Reign of Louis XIV - Interview with Jacob Soll
Download the text transcript (PDF) of Financial Accountability in France during the Reign of Louis XIV - Interview with Jacob Soll pdf

Sex in an Old Regime City - Interview with Julie Hardwick

Julie Hardwick (University of Texas at Austin) talks about her newest book Sex in an Old Regime City: Young Workers and Intimacy in France 1660 - 1789, which came out with Oxford University Press in September 2020. In the book, she focuses on intimacy among young workers who lived in the urban environment of early modern Lyon, and makes extensive use of archival material to examine a topic highly relevant for privacy studies.

Listen to the podcast episode here: Sex in an Old Regime City - Interview with Julie Hardwick podcast
Download the text transcript (PDF) of Sex in an Old Regime City - Interview with Julie Hardwick

Season 2


Private Rights and the Common Good in Late Scholastic Though‪t

James Gordley argues that, in the writings of the late scholastics, private rights and the common good were in harmony, but modern liberalism disrupted this harmony. In his lecture, he explains how these ideas fit together.

Listen to the podcast episode here: Private Rights and the Common Good in Late Scholastic Though‪t
Download the text transcript (PDF) of Private Rights and the Common Good in Late Scholastic Though‪t pdf

Lutheran Theology and Contract Law in Early Modern German‪y‬

Paolo Astorri, winner of the RefoRC Book Award 2020 for his book Lutheran Theology and Contract Law in Early Modern Germany, talks about the influence of theological ideas in the development of contract theory in 16th century Germany. In this interview, we cover how ideas by Reformers Martin Luther and Philip Melanchton were expanded, developed, and sometimes even distorted by theologians and jurists that came in their wake.

Listen to the podcast episode here: Lutheran Theology and Contract Law in Early Modern German‪y‬
Download the text transcript (PDF) of Lutheran Theology and Contract Law in Early Modern German‪y‬ pdf

Locating the Private in the Roman World

Andrew Riggsby gives a talk titled "Locating the Private in the Roman World." He explains that, despite their common use of explicit terms for “private” (and “public”), the ancient Romans did little to theorize those categories. In his talk, Andrew supplies such a theoretical account and points out ways in which the “private” was used as a tool of social control. Drawing from examples from the realms of domestic space and of financial regulation, he attends especially to gendered aspects of this control.

Listen to the podcast episode here: Locating the Private in the Roman World
Download the text transcript (PDF) of Locating the Private in the Roman World here

Locating the Cubiculum: Early Christian musings on the Place of Prayer 

Mette Birkedal Bruun talks about the Gospel of Matthew, which presents Jesus introducing the Lord's Prayer with an injunction to enter into the chamber and close the door so as to pray in secret (Mt 6.6). For early Christian authors, this command elicited a series of questions: How to reconcile the entry into the chamber with the command to pray everywhere (cf 1 Tim 2)? Where and what is this chamber – not to mention its door? How are praying persons to comport themselves in the chamber under God's watchful eye? In this talk, Mette discusses third- and fourth-century expositions of Mt 6.6 and ponder their place in privacy studies.

Listen to the podcast episode here: Locating the Cubiculum: Early Christian musings on the Place of Prayer
Download the text transcript (PDF) of Locating the Cubiculum: Early Christian musings on the Place of Prayer here

From Rooftop to Chamber: Prayer in Jerome’s Rendering of the Book of Judith 

Florian Wöller discusses the biblical book of Judith in a Latin rendering (4th c. AD) by the church father Jerome. This book tells the story of a courageous widow who saved Israel from the Assyrians by killing the Assyrian general Holofernes. In the oldest versions of the story, Judith prays on the roof of her house, but in Jerome's translation, she prays in a cubiculum. In this talk, Florian investigates Jerome's move of Judith's place of prayer, contextualizing it with further late antique notions of cubiculum prayer, and suggesting a reading of Judith's cubiculum as a private-public place of prayer.

Listen to the podcast episode here: From Rooftop to Chamber: Prayer in Jerome’s Rendering of the Book of Judith 
Download the text transcript (PDF) of Prayer in Jerome’s Rendering of the Book of Judith here

Season 1


Privacy and Gender in Early Modern German Speaking Areas 

Heide Wunder explores the emergence of modern "privacy“ or “Privatheit“ as a new concept of personal rights during the early modern period. She inspects evidence from printed sources such as funeral sermons, autobiographies and novels, which speak both to the spatial as well as to the gendered aspects of privacy.

Listen to the podcast episode here: Privacy and Gender in Early Modern German Speaking Areas 
Download the text transcript (PDF) of Privacy and Gender in Early Modern German Speaking Areas here

Madame de Maintenon's "Petits livres secrets" 

Lars Cyril Nørgaard talks about the private devotional practices of Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV's second wife, to whom the king was married in secret.

Listen to the podcast episode here: Madame de Maintenon's "Petits livres secrets" 
Download the text transcript (PDF) of Madame de Maintenon's "Petits livres secrets" here

Examining Privacy in Early Modern Letters 

Michaël Green talks about Dutch egodocuments and his research on privacy.

Listen to the podcast episode here: 
Examining Privacy in Early Modern Letters 
Download the text transcript (PDF) of Examining Privacy in Early Modern Letters here

Introducing the Centre for Privacy Studies

Mette Birkedal Bruun talks about her research on the history of privacy and the work at the Danish National Research Foundation's Centre for Privacy Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

Listen to the podcast episode here: Introducing the Centre for Privacy Studies 
Download the text transcript (PDF) of Introducing the Centre for Privacy Studies  here