PLSC 2026

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:
Privacy Law Scholars Conference 2026

www.privacyscholars.org

The Program & Planning Committee of the Privacy Law Scholars Conference invites submissions for the 19th annual conference (PLSC 2026) to be held in person on Thursday and Friday, May 28 and 29, 2026, with a new mentorship-focused pre-conference on the afternoon of Wednesday, May 27, at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law in Bloomington, Indiana. We are excited to introduce several new elements to PLSC and to this Call for Submissions, so please read in full.

Key dates:

Submissions due: January 20, 2026 by 11:59 PM Pacific time, no exceptions.

Notification of acceptance: Approximately three to four weeks later. 

Full workshop paper drafts and Discussion Session summaries due: May 7, 2026 by 11:59 Pacific time.

Registration: 

You can register for PLSC 2026 here. 

What is PLSC?

PLSC is a paper workshop conference. It offers no opportunity or obligation to publish. The goal is to provide support for in-progress scholarship related to law and technology and information privacy law. To do so, PLSC assembles a wide array of privacy law scholars, policymakers, and practitioners who engage in scholarship. Scholars from non-law disciplines—including but not limited to surveillance studies, technology studies, feminist and queer studies, information studies, critical race studies, social sciences, humanities, and computer science—are critical 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. For paper sessions, 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. If you are new to PLSC or would just like to familiarize yourself with PLSC norms and the roles of authors, commentators, and active participants, please read the Guide to PLSC.

What do we mean by “Privacy”?

The boundaries of privacy as a discipline are dynamic and contested. Although PLSC emphasizes 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: the concept of “cyber civil rights”, AI and algorithmic governance, police practices such as predictive policing, political/social/cultural dimensions of data-intensive technologies, algorithmic bias and discrimination, and privacy’s unique importance to marginalized populations, among many more.

Both in the substance of scholarship and in the governance of the PLSC, we are committed to building an anti-racist and anti-subordination scholarly community around privacy law. 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. 

What kinds of submissions does PLSC accept?

This year, we are accepting two types of submissions, both of which can be submitted on the same submission portal:

  1. Abstracts for Paper Sessions: These abstracts have been, are, and will continue to be the generative core of PLSC. We will accept approximately 70-80 abstract submissions for scholarly works-in-progress to be workshopped in concurrent sessions at PLSC.
  2. Discussion Sessions: Running concurrently with Paper Sessions, Discussion Sessions bring together participants interested in particular topics to engage in informal collaboration and idea generation. Discussion sessions have no papers and no commentators. See below for more details.

How to submit an abstract or discussion session proposal?

The submission portal is available here. Please use this link for both types of submissions.

Paper Sessions:

  • Identification Information: You will be asked to provide your name, institutional affiliation, and contact information, as well as the same information for all co-authors, if applicable. 
  • Abstracts: The core of your submission is an anonymous abstract of 500-700 words. Abstracts that are below 500 words or above 700 will be rejected. Successful abstracts explain the main contributions of the paper and how it relates to the existing relevant scholarly literature, referencing that literature in the body of the abstract using in-text citations. Legal scholars may be unfamiliar with this requirement, but here are some examples to demonstrate what we mean. Your abstract should include enough specific information to enable the PPC to appreciate both the genesis of the project and the nature of its contribution to the field. It should demonstrate awareness of the existing relevant literatures and explain how the work relates to those literatures, such as how it expands upon them, makes connections between them, or differs from them. That said, we understand that part of the benefit of workshopping a paper at PLSC is precisely to get feedback about how to situate one’s work in the scholarly literature. A typical law review abstract will generally be insufficient for submission. Submissions must be anonymous. If your own prior work is part of a literature to which your abstract refers, the abstract should refer to your work in the third person–e.g. “As Smith argued in (2019),” rather than “my/our work published in the XYZ law review” or “my/our work presented at last year’s PLSC.” Abstracts that reveal the identity of the author(s) will be rejected. There is no option to upload papers. Some examples of successful abstracts are available here. 
  • Bibliography: You must also include a bibliography in a separate box; this does not count toward the 500-700 word limit. The purpose of the bibliography is to show the primary literature and sources on which your project is based. You may include up to 10 sources. Note that this is not a list of professional references; it is a bibliography, a list of sources that describe the core of the literatures with which you are engaging. We do not recommend simply cutting and pasting your first ten footnotes. Abstracts that are not accompanied by a bibliography of no more than 10 sources will be rejected. 
  • Keywords: Finally, you must select up to three keywords from a list provided. This is essential to categorizing your work and assigning appropriate commentators.
  • Multiple Submissions: There is no limit to the number of abstracts that one person may submit, but PLSC does have rules about how many we accept. If an author submits abstracts for more than one single-author paper, we will only accept one of those papers. Someone can be a co-author on up to two accepted papers unless it is a senior scholar added to papers as a final author as is customary in some fields. The PPC reserves the right to only accept a limited number of these submissions as well.
  • Works in Progress: PLSC is a works-in-progress conference. We will not accept papers that have already been published or are far enough along in the publication process that they cannot benefit from feedback.
  • Funding: Any funding and sponsorship must be disclosed, and there is a space in the abstract submission portal to do so. We will not accept papers that are subject to pre-publication review/veto by a sponsor, or those where the sponsors control the content of the paper. 
  • Award Consideration: If your submission is accepted and you would like to be considered for PLSC’s paper awards, your draft paper must be submitted on time. No exceptions.

Discussion Sessions:

  • Identification Information: You will be asked to provide your name, institutional affiliation, and contact information, as well as the same information for any co-organizers, if applicable. 
  • Proposal: A proposal for a Discussion Session should include a (1) title/topic, (2) a maximum 200-word summary of what you hope to discuss, and (3) a maximum 100-word statement of need–namely, why this topic, why now.
  • Co-Organizers: Multiple people can organize a single Discussion Session. Please include all names in the submission portal.
  • Responsibilities: Discussion Sessions have no papers and no commentators. Organizers are responsible for moderating their own sessions. Sessions will be listed on the PLSC schedule ahead of time so participants can determine which sessions, if any, they would like to attend.
  • Possible Topics: We are excited to experiment with Discussion Sessions after receiving feedback from PLSC attendees and PPC members. There is no set number of sessions or series of topics we have in mind; this will be entirely participant-driven. Some ideas include: So-called “birds-of-a-feather” sessions on topics of mutual interests, sessions on how to teach law and technology-related courses, sessions focused on responding to fast-moving or ongoing current events, and many more.

Mentorship Pre-Conference:

Mark your calendars for PLSC’s first half-day pre-conference event focused on mentoring junior scholars and building a collegial community. It will take place immediately before PLSC on Wednesday, May 27, at IU Bloomington, from approximately 1-5 PM local time. The Junior Scholars Council and the PPC are hard at work planning this event. More details will follow soon.

Hotels:

Our hosts at IU Maurer have arranged for blocs of rooms at nearby hotels. Please use the links below to make your reservations.

Indiana Memorial Union, The Biddle Hotel
900 E. Seventh Street, Bloomington, IN 47405
Reservations and Hotel Information

The Graduate, by Hilton, Bloomington. 
210 E Kirkwood Ave, Bloomington, Indiana, 47408
Reservations and Hotel Information

Please email info@privacyscholars.com if there are any questions or concerns.

– PLSC Program Committee