Private Communication and Surveillance: From the Early Modern Era to the Present Day, Day 1

BGSH workshop with Prof. Johannes Ljungberg (University of Copenhagen). In addition to Prof. Ljungberg, Markus Bardenheuer (Basel), Dr. Carla Teresa Roth and Dr. Mirjam Janett (Bern), will be taking part in the round table.

The post-war era witnessed a significant expansion of the right to privacy on a global scale. Simultaneously, there has been a proliferation of social and technological means employed by both public and private actors to penetrate the private sphere. This workshop explores how these developments have shaped historiographic approaches to the fields of privacy and surveillance, from the early modern period to the present day.

On the first day of the workshop, we will explore various approaches to privacy and surveillance through in-depth discussion of key conceptual texts. The day will conclude with a small roundtable, in which Johannes Ljungberg, along with other experts in the field of privacy and surveillance, will share insights from their recent work. The second day provides an opportunity for participants to introduce their own approaches to privacy and surveillance, and outline conceptual and practical challenges in their own work. The workshop aims to foster a conversation on diverse modes of privacy and surveillance across temporal and spatial boundaries. Furthermore, it serves as a platform to address the difficulties historians face in their search for traces of private communication and their encounter with sources generated by surveillance actors.

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