PLSC Europe 2026
Hosted by Centre of IT & IP Law (CiTiP), KU Leuven

The conference will take place at KU Leuven on 29^th October (12:30 – 18:30) and 30^th October 2026 (9:30 – 17:00). The full schedule will be released in September.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Organizing committee

• Laura Drechsler
• Elora Fernandes
• Isabela Maria Rosal

Program committee

• Jef Ausloos, University of Amsterdam
• Rocco Bellanova, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• Franziska Boehm, FIZ Karlsruhe
• Damian Clifford, London School of Economics and Political Science
• Jennifer Cobbe, University of Cambridge
• Ignacio Cofone, Oxford University 
• Mark David Cole, University of Luxembourg
• Bart Custers, Leiden University
• Laura Drechsler, KU Leuven CiTiP
• David Erdos, University of Cambridge
• Marta Cantero Gamito, European University Institute
• Gloria González Fuster, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• Mateusz Grochowski, Tulane University Law School
• Woodrow Hartzog, Boston University School of Law
• Natali Helberger, University of Amsterdam
• Kristina Irion, University of Amsterdam
• Margot Kaminski, University of Colorado Boulder
• Eleni Kosta, Tilburg University
• Maxime Lassalle, L’Université de Bourgogne Europe
• Eva Lievens, Ghent University
• Orla Lynskey, University College of London 
• Joanna Mazur, University of Warsaw
• Alessandro Mantelero, Politecnico di Torino
• Nóra Ní Loideáin, University of London
• Nadya Purtova, Utrecht University
• Giorgio Resta, Roma 3 University
• Neil Richards, Washington University in St. Louis
• Cristiana Teixeira Santos, Utrecht University
• Giovanni Sartor, University of Bologna / European University Institute
• Sophie Stalla-Bourdillon, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• Joris van Hoboken, University of Amsterdam
• Simone van der Hof, Leiden University
• Bart van der Sloot, Tilburg University 
• Ari Ezra Waldman, University of California, Irvine School of Law
• Monika Zalnieriute, Vilnius University Faculty of Law 
• Gerrit-Jan Zwenne, Leiden University / Open Universiteit

Funding

PLSC-Europe will be funded through institutional funds and registration fees only (standard: € 185, students/NGO’s: € 105). We will not seek corporate sponsorship for the conference.

Join us!

Join us for the European Privacy Law Scholars Conference,
hosted at the KU Leuven Faculty of Law on 29-30 October 2026.
Send your abstracts here and more info on this page.

Please contact us via Isabela Maria Rosal if there are any questions or concerns.