Privacy Talk with Mette Birkedal Bruun, Professor of Church History at the University of Copenhagen: What is the interdisciplinary collaboration research?
“This interview recorded on 28th June 2022 is talking about privacy
and history”
Kohei is having great time discussing privacy and history with Mette Birkedal Bruun.
This interview outline:
- What is the Privacy Studies Journal?
- What does the exchanging conversation bring to us?
- What is the interdisciplinary collaboration research?
- Message to listeners
- What is the Privacy Studies Journal?
Mette: So the Privacy Studies Journal is an open access, peer reviewed research journal. And we are working now on the first issue which will come out this fall.
And as you say, it’s actually a journal that mirrors the interdisciplinary ambition of the center, but also the ambition to move into a past-present dialogue.
So the idea with the Privacy Studies Journal is really to approach topics on a global range and on a very comprehensive scholarly, comprehensive reach, so including everything from historical fields to computer science to crisis management to economy, in order to, as we’ve already talked about, in order to reach this more holistic approach to privacy.
The hope is that the journal can really be a place where you get some inspiring and also some unexpected constellations of articles. Because, of course, it’ll be online and it will be open access, so people will probably approach individual articles.
But the idea is also that, hopefully, if you see an article on contemporary computer science next to an article on, I don’t know, early modern houses, you begin to think in a more creative way and in a more comprehensive and in a more complex way about privacy.
We’re hoping, eventually, that the journal can actually be sort of a center of a scholarly environment that’s really curious and creative about thinking about privacy in a more comprehensive way. So we are at the very early stages, but we will launch the first issue this fall.
Kohei: Thank you. So through this journal, do you have any ideas to achieve any goals or any purposes in the privacy space? Because I think there is very few academic research especially for historical research and the background.
But we are the time to back to the history because we’re going to start the collaborative but just only for the academic, but also the politics or technologies indeed. So do you have any goals for that?
- What does the exchanging conversation bring to us?
Mette: Well, I think the whole past-present conversation is extremely interesting and fruitful. We just had a workshop at the Computer Privacy Data protection Conference in Brussels, where we had a whole day dedicated to past and present presentations where scholars working on, for instance, contemporary border surveillance and border management, were in exchange and in discussion with some of the historians from the center who work on early modern migration and on how borders were surveyed and controlled and regulated.
And I think that conversation between past and present is extremely fruitful. It takes time because we need to understand each other, but I hope that the journal can be a place where we develop those kinds of exchanges, because I think that the past is a good way of asking questions to the present.
When you look at — and that is one of the ambitions of the center — when you look at historical notions of privacy, you get a sort of an aerial perspective that allows you to see how different factors interact, for instance, religious factors.
So what is the role of belief systems of value systems in a given historical context?
And that’s one of the ways in which our research into historical notions of privacy can ask some difficult questions, actually, to the present and say, what are the beliefs and the values — not necessarily religious — but what are the beliefs and the values that surround our notions of privacy and the whole idea of data protection?
What are the beliefs about what it is to be a human being or what is democracy or what is freedom? — or all these sorts of difficult questions.
I think history can actually help us to think about them and ask these questions. I hope that the journal can be in a place where we do that on a more systematic basis.
Kohei: I agree that it is very to create a good environment for even the beginner to come because there is a very different kind of the privacy perspective. Each individual is embracing privacy itself just in separating the public and private.
Then different countries have a different context. That could be migrating how we can create a new of this equation of privacy. So that’s a very interesting idea that you are on going this moment.
- What is the interdisciplinary collaboration research?
Mette: I think you’re absolutely right. And I think the whole ability to listen to each other — so so to listen across cultures and listen across disciplines, and listen across past and present — I think that’s so extremely important. And I hope the journal can be a place where we train each other to listen.
Kohei: Awesome. So the next question about this in the future landscape. On your center site. I discovered some of the components of the interdisciplinary collaborations. I think this is quite an interesting concept to squeeze out the different contexts, in different regions, different individual histories. So could you tell us about the interdisciplinary collaboration research for your center?
Mette: Yes. Well, I think so. Interdisciplinary collaboration is extremely difficult, because, as I said, we’re not trained to work together. So we are trained in our own scholarly traditions with our own scholarly criteria. You know, what is a good scientific argument, that varies, actually, from one scholarly field to another.
And when we sit together, again we have to listen to each other and we have to understand ‘well in your field, you need to do like this in order to be accepted by your peers’.
So I think interdisciplinary collaboration, it’s wonderful because it gives us a more holistic perspective on topics such as privacy, but it’s also a form of training.
It’s really a training, actually a hard training, into creating a form of mental agility that makes us more open to other perspectives.
And I think if we train each other to work, collaborate interdisciplinarily, we also become better equipped to listen to other cultural approaches or listen to other, you know, again, past present.
So I think actually the interdisciplinary collaboration, it’s very good for the scholarship because it creates better scholarship, even though it takes a long time because we have to listen a lot to each other, but it also creates a more holistic approach in terms of cultural openness and in terms of, as you say, understanding perhaps that well, if privacy is a western concept, what does that mean for global legislation for instance, and global technology for instance, how do we begin to work with with that in a in a constructive and respectful way?
Kohei: Thank you.
If you have any good example that you have been conducted the research until now related to the disciplinary collaborations because for listeners, it’s very easy to find out what kind of example we can learn from your work.
Mette: Yes. So I have actually two examples. One is historical and one is contemporary. I think the problem or the challenge for interdisciplinarity is that some of the outcomes are actually sort of invisible
So I have some colleagues, a church historian and historian of popular healing who are working together on a particular historical case. With a princess in early modern Germany, who was creating some recipes for medicine, but she was also communicating with her court preacher about prayers.
And normally we would study those two things completely separately. So the church historian would look at prayers and the historian of healing would look at the recipes, but when these two scholars are working together, they begin to see how actually in that particular cultural context one person would both deal with prayers and popular healing.
And so it gives a more holistic view of that particular person and that particular context because, you know, our lives are composed of a lot of different elements and when we want to study historical lives, it’s also important to look at a lot of different elements together.
So that’s one example. The other example is I have a project on the home during Corona and after, which is a spinoff from the Centre for Privacy Studies and it deals with experiences of the home during Corona, what can we learn about what is the good home that we may take with us into the future.
Again, it’s a really ambitious interdisciplinary project with people from architecture, family studies, science and technology studies and theology.
And I think perhaps one of the most important outcomes of that project is that we have project meetings once a week, and the architect is working together with the family historian, and she deals with domestic violence during Corona.
So when the architect listens to the scholar who deals with domestic violence, domestic violence becomes a part of his horizon on architecture.
And of course, there is no direct correlation, you know, you cannot build houses that that prevent domestic abuse, but perhaps, you know, just as you’re thinking about light and functionality, perhaps this whole idea of well, you know, domestic well-being and domestic safety, how do we we cater to that architecturally?
And I think there will probably not be a publication that explains that. But within his mindset, his sort of scholarly toolbox as an architect, the notion of domestic violence will be one component. And I think that’s a very nice example of how interdisciplinarity works, that we inspire each other.
And sometimes we inspire each other in invisible ways. Perhaps it’s not really spoken, it’s not out there, but it lingers in our minds, and that is important because we take it with us in our research.
- Message to listeners
Kohei: Thank you. Yeah, I think we should take on the kind of the research in a variety of this space, we should be more specific about progressions to learn from each history so that’s a very interesting topic. So you organize this formula at the center dissenters.
So lastly, I’d like to ask you to share some of the message for the listeners because your study it’s very important to learn from the Privacy Community as well as non-Privacy Community who come to this space. So could you give us any message from your perspective?
Mette: I think I’d like to repeat, actually, I think the holistic approach is extremely important. I think that getting together from many different disciplines and listening to each other and learning from each other is extremely important.
I think privacy is wonderful, it’s an important topic. It’s also a very interesting topic because it’s such an analytical catalyst.
When we begin to try to understand privacy, we also begin to understand what is the relationship between individuals and communities, between small groups and society, between technologies and human beings. So there are so many corollaries of the interest in privacy, and we need a lot of different perspectives on that.
Kohei: Thank you. That’s a very good message. Thank you for having this conversation. So let’s keep updates and looking forward to your new publication journal, then happy to share to the communities that enhance together.
Mette: Thank you so much. This was a pleasure.
Kohei: Thank you.
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