eLaw – Center for Law and Digital Technologies
PLSC-Europe
Following the format of PLSC in the United States, PLSC Europe is a conference for stimulating work in progress. Discussants, rather than authors, kick off and lead a conversation on a paper. There are no panels or presentations by the authors. 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.
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.
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 fi eld. 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.
As a paper workshop conference, authors are free to submit a working paper (draft, in progress) for which they seek constructive feedback and suggestions for improvement/evolution. There are no formal requirements for the paper. The paper is then discussed by the discussant and audience, and authors and participants should leave the session inspired by the discussion and with insights that will help them in their own work.
The boundaries of privacy as a discipline are dynamic and contested. Although PLSC-Europe emphasises the law of privacy, concepts from other fi elds play critical roles in our understanding of privacy and in shaping the law. For example, the following topics have received signifi cant 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.
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 suffi cient preparation time in advance of the conference. The papers will be made available to conference participants on October 1st, 2025.
Registration fees are as follows:
● Standard: € 175
● Students/NGO’s: € 95
Registration link to the conference will be available in the coming weeks.
The conference will take place at Leiden Law School on 23rd October (12:30 – 18:30) and 24th October 2025 (9:30 – 17:00). The full schedule will be released in September.
Abstracts should be between 400-700 words and contain sufficient detail to review theapproach and potential contribution of the work. See here for more details.
The program committee will review the abstracts in a double-blind procedure, and notifi ation of acceptance will take place on 20 June 2025. Workshop versions of the paper are due 1 October 2025. We reserve the right to cancel workshops if the paper draft is not provided on time for meaningful evaluation by participants. The confirmation of the conference and of its logistics will follow in further communication.
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.
The conference will be held on 23-24 October 2025 at the Kamerlingh Onnes Building (KOG), Steenschuur 25, 2311 ES Leiden, the Netherlands. The conference starts at 12:30 on the 23rd and ends at 17:00 on the 24th.
- Abstracts due: 12 May 2025 (PLSC Europe 2025 Abstract Submission Link)
- Notification of acceptance: 20 June 2025
- Papers due: 1 October 2025
- PLSC-Europe 2025: 23 October (from 12:30) and 24 October 2025
To be determined.
Join us!
Join us for the European Privacy Law Scholars Conference,
hosted at the Leiden Law School on 23-24 October 2025.
Send your abstracts here.
Please contact us at m.j.picout@law.leidenuniv.nl if there are any questions or concerns.