4th Northumbria Information Rights Conference call for papers

I have been asked to post the following call for papers for the Fourth Northumbria Information Rights Conference, which takes place on Monday 6 June 2011 at Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK.

The theme of the conference will be “Privacy, Openness and Accountability”. Our aim is to explore the relationships and tensions between these objectives in a multi-disciplinary forum. John Wadham, Group Legal Director of the Equality and Human Rights Commission will give the keynote address.

Those interested in presenting a paper are invited to submit abstracts as set out below.

The following topics will be explored within the overall theme, and papers will be grouped for presentation accordingly. Each speaker will be allotted 20 minutes for presentation of their paper plus time for round-table discussion:

• Access to information (including, but not limited to, papers on freedom of information and access to environmental information, impact on government transparency and accountability, and subject access requests under the Data Protection Act 1998)
  Susan Wolf susan.wolf@northumbria.ac.uk 

• Protecting personal privacy (including, but not limited to, papers on data protection and data security, confidentiality, the right to respect for privacy)
  Andrew Watson andrew3.watson@northumbria.ac.uk 

• Information sharing (including, but not limited to, information sharing in the commercial context, electronic care records, information sharing to protect the vulnerable or to manage risk)
  Helen Morris helen.morris@northumbria.ac.uk 

• Access to justice (including, but not limited to, papers on public interest immunity and privileged information, the use of special advocates, media access, openness and the family courts)
  Claire Bessant claire.bessant@northumbria.ac.uk

This call is open to academics, postgraduate students and practitioners from all disciplines, but particularly law, politics, information science and records management. Please contact the convenor of your intended stream if you wish to discuss your idea for a paper before submitting an abstract.

Abstracts not exceeding 300 words should be submitted to the relevant stream convenor by 21 February 2011. Submission must be by Word document e-mail attachment to the stream convenor’s email address shown above and should include, in addition to the abstract, your title, name and organisation/institutional affiliation and your email address for correspondence.

If your proposed paper does not fall within one of the streams but is nonetheless relevant to the overall theme, please send your abstract to Helen Morris, details above, who should also be contacted with any general enquiries.

All proposals will be reviewed, and successful applicants will be notified at the latest by 1 April 2011.

Please note that speakers will not be exempt from the registration fee for the conference but will be entitled to the early registration discount. A booking form with full registration fees will be available in January 2011.

Please contact maureen.cooke@northumbria.ac.uk for any general enquiries about the conference or telephone 0191 243 7597.