UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — An interdisciplinary team of researchers is inviting scholars to submit papers for a workshop to address the complex relationship between privacy, technology and vulnerability.
Penn State’s Dickinson Law, the Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) and Monash University have joined together to sponsor the “Privacy, Technology and Vulnerability Workshop,” which will be held at Monash University Prato Centre in Prato, Italy on June 22-23.
The invitation-only workshop will create a platform for discovering and connecting the complementary research capabilities of Monash Faculty of Law, Penn State Dickinson Law, ICDS, and the broader Monash and Penn State universities to explore and address how ongoing technological advances, including AI and big data analytics, impact individuals and societies, including shifting geo-political norms, and how regulation should respond to the increasing “datafication” of our daily lives.
How advancing and invasive technologies are affecting both vulnerable persons and larger society is the focus of intense research and debate. The workshop will focus on two aspects of vulnerability: the vulnerability of marginalized groups and the vulnerability of democratic institutions and social norms. One of the workshop’s organizers, Anne Toomey McKenna, an ICDS and Dickinson Law co-hire, notes that “more research is needed concerning the role of ethics and law in regulation of a data-driven economy, as well as in finding ways to detect and deter ongoing, destabilizing, online-disinformation campaigns by state and non-state actors.”
The workshop will provide researchers with the opportunity to network and learn about new methodologies, approaches, and funding opportunities. The workshop is part of a broader collaborative effort between Dickinson Law, Monash Faculty of Law, and ICDS, which also includes a three-credit comparative law course being co-taught by faculty from both law schools in June of 2020 at Monash’s Prato Centre. The course’s faculty are Normann Witzleb and Moira Paterson from Monash, Dickinson Law’s Academic Dean, Amy C. Gaudion, and ICDS’s McKenna. The course will analyze and contrast U.S., European, and Australian laws and regulation of privacy, technology and data. It is open to Penn State and Monash students, who will be invited to attend one day of the workshop as part of the class.
Authors of selected papers will be invited to present and discuss them during the workshop. Each accepted paper will be assigned a respondent recruited from the academic communities and will be allotted time for presentation, response, and discussion. The two-day event is designed to provide room for social interaction.
Expressions of interest should be submitted via email by Jan. 15. A 500-word (maximum) abstract should be submitted by Jan. 30. Only a limited number of abstracts will be accepted. Organizers will make acceptance decisions from the abstracts submitted and will issue invitations by Feb. 10. Drafts will be due May 30. To learn more, including submission details, please visit the Privacy, Technology and Vulnerability Workshop website.
The Monash University Prato Centre is a site for international academic programs and research collaborations. Prato is a culturally and historically rich city located in Tuscany.