The autumn is busy at the Centre for Privacy Studies. The new case-teams have delved into their cases, and the established case-teams have deepened their research. On top of this, we have had a series of stimulating research exchanges with prominent colleagues.

On 2 October, Associate Professor Karen Asta Arnfred Vallgårda from the Saxo Institute joined us for a Challenge Seminar. Her lecture entitled Family Secrecy and Privacy examined the effects of secrets on family life and the meeting between family and society in this context. Vallgårda's lecture and the ensuing discussion was rooted in her 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.

On 14 October, PRIVACY joined forces with the Centre de recherche du château de Versailles in the jointly-hosted symposium Conspicuous Privacy Versailles: Charity in Versailles under Louis XIV, held at Versailles. In Ancien Régime France nobles vaunted their charitable acts, often in intricate performances with detailed mises-en-scène. There is an apparent paradox between the privacy surrounding charitable acts as it was prescribed in normative discourses and the actual public flaunting of these acts. However, as the symposium showed, once we dig deeper into the charitable activities of individual figures, we see how the public and the private are intertwined and connected.

From 31 October to 1 November, we had a visit from Professor Emerita Heide Wunder, one of the towering figures of German women's studies. On 31 October, Prof. Wunder held a lecture entitled ‘Aspects of Privacy and Gender in Early Modern German-Speaking Countries’. She looked to sources for the emergence of privacy/”Privatheit” to explain the changes in the public-private divide beginning in the age of enlightenment and as part of overall social change. On 1 November, we had an internal PRIVACY seminar where Prof. Wunder engaged with the individual research interest of each of the PRIVACY scholars and we read an early modern source together, looking for thresholds and zones as well as explicit and implicit notions of privacy and the private.

In April, the Centre for Privacy Studies will host a symposium on
practices of knowledge. We invite scholars who are interested in exploring the dynamics
of privacy involved in daily practices of knowledge. We welcome papers that
deal with primary sources from any historical period as well as different
historiographical methodologies. Speakers will have 20 minutes to present their
material, followed by 10 minutes for Q&A. Selected articles resulting from
work presented at this symposium will be submitted for publication as a journal
issue. Please apply for participation by sending us an abstract of max. 300
words. 
Deadline for application: February 21, 2020
 
You can read more on our website or through this link.

18 Nov 2019
SEMINAR: Privacy in Early Modern Dutch Art and Architecture: Interior and Space

The emergence and expansion of burgher culture in the early modern Low Countries dramatically transformed the conditions for art and architecture, not least in relation to privacy. In this seminar, we will discuss this transformation and how it unfolded.

22 Apr - 23 Apr 2020
SYMPOSIUM: Practices of Privacy: Knowledge in the Making

Even when practices of knowledge require a more social component, there might still the concern for maintaining a certain level of privacy. Want to contribute to our examination of knowledge and practices of privacy? Deadline for the Call for Papers is 21 February 2010.

2019.11.01
Mette Birkedal Bruun in Radio24syv's '24 Spørgsmål til Professoren'

Journalist Lone Frank has interviewed Mette Birkedal Bruun for the radioshow '24 Spørgsmål til Professoren'. In the podcast, Bruun tells about monestary life, solitude and how her research in early modern privacy can be used in a modern perspective.

2019.10.25
PRIVACY Scholar Fabio Gigone Receives Grant

PRIVACY scholar Fabio Gigone has been granted by the William Demant Fonden with 8500 dkk to conduct research at ETH Zurich. He will be under the supervision of Maarten Delbeke within the Chair of History and Theory from February to May 2020.