We are excited to announce a call for abstracts for the
European Privacy Law Scholars Conference,
which will be hosted at the University of Amsterdam,
24-25 October 2024.
Following the format of PLSC in the United States, PLSC Europe is a conference for discussing work in progress. In the PLSC format, discussants, rather than authors, present and kick off a discussion on an assigned paper. There are no panels or presentations by the authors and everyone is a “participant”, offering their best questions and insights to stimulate discussion on fresh scholarship. There is no opportunity or obligation to publish connected to the conference.
Our goal is to improve and provide support for in-progress scholarship on a wide variety of issues and topics that touch upon privacy in its broadest interpretation. As such, we very much welcome submissions from different (sub)disciplines, taking alternative angles to privacy and data governance more broadly.
This year’s edition of PLSC Europe is organised alongside the DTDM-Conference “City Data Governance”, which focuses on the impact of the new EU Data Act and the Data Governance Act at the municipality level (more information to be announced soon). With that in mind, we particularly invite people to submit paper abstracts relating to the growing field of data law, including city data governance.
What is PLSC-Europe?
Just like PLSC in the United States, PLSC-Europe is a paper workshop conference. There is no opportunity or obligation to publish connected to the conference. The goal is to provide support for in-progress scholarship related to information privacy law. To do so, PLSC-Europe assembles a wide array of privacy scholars, and a number of academically engaged practitioners (from civil society or public and private sector). Scholars from non-law disciplines – including but not limited to surveillance studies, information and technology studies, critical (legal) studies, humanities, and computer science – are crucial participants in this interdisciplinary field. We follow a format in which a discussant, rather than the author, introduces and leads a discussion on a paper. There are no panels or talking heads; attendees read papers in advance and offer constructive feedback as full participants in the workshop. Having your paper accepted is NOT a requirement for attending and contributing to the conference, and indeed many attendees do not present a paper.
The first PLSC-Europe was held in October 2015 in conjunction with the Amsterdam Privacy Conference, and the second one in May 2017, in conjunction with TILTing Perspectives 2017. Between 2017 and 2019, PLSC-Europe was held yearly, while the PLSC-Europe 2020 was cancelled due the coronavirus measures at the time.
What do we mean by “Privacy”?
The boundaries of privacy as a discipline are dynamic and contested. Although PLSC-Europe emphasises the law of privacy, concepts from other fields play critical roles in our understanding of privacy and in shaping the law. For example, the following topics have received significant attention at previous PLSCs: fundamental rights, algorithmic governance and discrimination, police practices such as predictive policing, political/social/cultural/technical dimensions of data-intensive technologies, and privacy’s unique importance to marginalised populations, among many more.
We are dedicated to incubating scholarship that examines the intersections of technology, law, and policy and its ability to dismantle–or entrench–social hierarchies of all kinds.
Call For Abstracts And Guidelines
If you would like to workshop a paper, please submit a an abstract via our conference submission system by 3 May 2024.
Abstracts should be between 400-700 words and contain sufficient detail to review the approach and potential contribution of the work (for more detailed instructions, see below).
The program committee for the conference will review (double-blind) abstracts and acceptances will be made by 14 June 2024. Workshop versions of the paper are due 1 October 2024. We reserve the right to cancel workshops if the paper draft is not provided on time for meaningful evaluation by participants.
What should be in my abstract?
Your abstract should include enough specific information to enable the program committee to appreciate both the genesis of your project and the nature of its contribution to the field. Your abstract should elaborate on your objective, research question(s) and methodology. It should also show your awareness of the existing relevant literatures and explain how your work relates to those literatures, such as how it expands upon them, makes connections between them, or differs from them. A typical (law) journal abstract will generally be insufficient for this purpose.
Please be prepare to enter the following information through out submission platform:
- Title + anonymous abstract of 400-700 words
- Author(s) information and affiliation(s). Submissions should be transparent about relevant sponsorship and conflicts of interest
- Five keywords
- Indicative bibliography
Please note: If your own prior work is part of a literature to which your abstract refers, the abstract should refer to your work in the third person–e.g. “As Smith argued in (2019),” rather than “my/our work published in the XYZ law review” or “my/our work presented at last year’s PLSC.”
PLEASE NOTE: Abstracts that violate this rule and reveal the identity of the author(s) will be rejected. There is no option to upload papers or materials.
Any funding and sponsorship must be disclosed. We also require a conflict of interest statement on scholarship. There is a space in the abstract submission portal to do so.
Key Dates
Abstracts due: 3 May 2024
Announcement of acceptance: 14 June 2024
Papers due: 1 October 2024
PLSC-Europe 2024: 24 October (from 13:30) and 25 October 2024
Participation Registration
We welcome submissions and registration from all backgrounds, jurisdictions and levels of seniority. Please note that conference participants will be expected to read the papers of the sessions they attend in advance to ensure high-quality discussions. Thus, please plan for sufficient preparation time in advance of the conference. The papers will be made available to conference participants on October 1st, 2024, the latest.
Registration fees are as follows:
- Standard: € 175;
- Students/NGO’s: € 95.
Limited funds might be available for covering travel expenses of some participants. We will prioritise people without institutional backing and coming from outside the EU/US.
Registration will be opened on this website later this year.
Organizing Committee
Program Committee
- Rocco Bellanova, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
- Nataliia Bielova, INRIA
- Franziska Boehm, FIZ Karlsruhe
- Athena Bourka, European Union Agency for Cybersecurity
- Anna Buchta, European Data Protection Supervisor
- Marta Cantero Gamito, University of Tartu
- Jeniffer Cobbe, University of Cambridge
- Laura Drechsler, KU Leuven
- Gloria Gonzalez Fuster, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
- Natali Helberger, Universiteit van Amsterdam
- Heleen Janssen, Universiteit van Amsterdam
- Margot Kaminski, University of Colorado Boulder
- Eleni Kosta, Tilburg University
- Eva Lievens, Ghent University
- Alessandro Mantelero, Politecnico Di Torino
- Joanna Mazur, University of Warsaw
- Stan Piasecki, Hitotsubashi University
- Neil Richards, Washington University in St. Louis
- Cristiana Teixeira Santos, Utrecht University
- Joris Van Hoboken, Universiteit van Amsterdam
- Michael Veale, University College London
- Sandra Wachter, University of Oxford
- Ari Ezra Waldman, University of California, Irvine School of Law
- Raphaële Xenidis, Sciences Po
- Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius, Radboud University
Funding
PLSC-Europe will be funded through institutional funds and registration fees only (standard: € 175, students/NGO’s: € 95). We will not seek corporate sponsorship for the conference.
Practicalities
The conference will be held on 24-25 October 2024 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. More information on the facilities, traveling and accommodation will follow soon.
Contact
Please contact us at plsceurope@protonmail.com if there are any questions or concerns.