Re-Imagining Cryptography and Privacy (ReCAP) Workshop


The Re-Imagining Cryptography and Privacy (ReCAP) Workshop explores the ways in which cryptography and privacy intersect with society toward designing, creating, and sustaining technologies that explicitly benefit marginalized communities. We welcome work and perspectives from social scientists, humanities scholars, community organizations, and technologists. The focus of the ReCAP Workshop is Re-Imagination: identifying the aspects of cryptography and privacy technology production that contribute to marginalization, and solidifying approaches, ideas, and designs that center marginalized voices, resist toxic aspects of technology production and work toward dismantling systems of marginalization. The ReCAP Workshop seeks to build and sustain a diverse community that is committed to the broadening of access to the field and engaging in socially-conscious work.

ReCAP 2025 is a hybrid workshop from June 3-4, 2025 that will take place physically in New York, New York (USA) and virtually on Zoom.


Call for Submissions

Submissions to ReCAP 2025 will be accepted on a rolling basis until April 10, 2025. As many submissions as possible will be included in the workshop program (depending on desired presentation format and volume of submissions per topic). All submissions that fit the workshop topic(s) will (optionally) have their title, author list, and abstract published on the ReCAP website. The title and author list will (optionally) be included in the printable zine. To submit an idea, please use this link.

We are looking for submissions related to the following topics. We offer some guiding questions as points of reflection and discussion but your submission need not answer each one:

Community Voices: This session creates space for people working from within community organizations or for individuals with marginalized intersections of identity to share their experiences with harms relating to privacy or surveillance. Additionally, we hope for this to be an opportunity to drive further community engagement and relationship building. We will prioritize those outside of academia to share their perspectives in this session. Prior examples include:
Privacy and Systems of Power: Systems of power, while amplified by certain technologies, exist beyond a singular realm of study and cannot be deconstructed or re-imagined only along a single axis. This session serves as a space for understanding the realities of communities who resist systems of power, and for resistance mechanisms that center the expertise of marginalized communities over technical solutions. This session serves as a space to understand the privacy needs of people and communities that centers lived experiences over technical solutions. We invite perspectives from different academic subdisciplines in this session, including (but not limited to) work that combats institutionalized surveillance. Prior examples include:
Privacy Applications & Infrastructure: How do we think about, talk about, design, build, and sustain cryptography and privacy tools that meet the needs of individuals and groups of people? How might existing practices of threat modeling, protocol design, and deployment in cryptography and privacy flatten, miss, or undermine people's needs? Prior examples include:
Creative Expression: This session will be dedicated to all forms of creative expression (multi-media art, music, song, dance, poetry and creative writing, performance, etc.) produced and enjoyed by people in the cryptography and privacy community. The creative expression itself does not need to relate to cryptography or privacy.

Prior examples include:

Informal Discussion Sessions

ReCAP 2025 will feature two informal spaces for discussion. Participation does not require any formal submission. More information will be made available to attendees closer to the workshop.

Open Problems & Emerging Work: This session is a space discuss and gather input from ReCAP attendees on new problems or ongoing work. This session will be structured as a series of lightning talks followed by group discussions.


Reflection and Discussion: This will be an informally moderated space in which to reflect, share experiences and anecdotes, pose problems, and look toward solutions. Through this conversation we hope to inform the visioning of future iterations of ReCAP, and think toward what we are all looking for in a space that re-imagines cryptography and privacy in ways that are meaningful to the ReCAP community. This session will not be recorded, though participants will be free to document ideas (with the ideators' consent) on sticky notes or the blackboard.


Logistics






Other



Contact Organizers