ECMI Senior Researcher Dr. Ljubica Djordjević Participated in the BeSEC Conference

2020-06-24

Last week ECMI Senior Researcher Ljubica Djordjević participated in the online conference Boosting European Security Law and Policy, which was the final event of the BeSEC project. BeSEC is a Jean-Monnet project led by the Law Department of the University of Siena in cooperation with the ECMI, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, and the Matej Bel University. The Project has now come to its final phase as it will end in August 2020 after two years of successful implementation. The ECMI hosted one of the Project’s thematic workshops entitled Focus on Personal Data, Ethnic Data and Security in May 2019. One of the two sessions of the workshop focused exclusively on the issue of collection and protection of ethnic sensitive data and possible threats to human security. Processing of ethnic sensitive data is one of the key research areas of the ECMI’s Justice & Governance Cluster

During the final conference, Dr. Djordjević presented the topic Processing of Ethnic Data: Juggling between Data Protection and Diversity Management in the fourth and final session devoted to data security and protection of privacy (please find the full programme in pdf here). In her presentation Djordjević tackled the complex issue of processing of ethnic data through the nexus of three aspects. Firstly, she focused on the need for ethnic data in diversity management, what the purpose of ethnic data is and which data is relevant for diversity management. Secondly, Dr. Djordjević explained the challenges of the protection of (personal) ethnic data as sensitive data. She emphasized that although data protection regulations are often misinterpreted and used as a justification not to collect ethnic data, the European legal framework opens the possibility to process such data if some conditions and safeguards are met. Finally, she outlined the methodological challenges of "measuring" ethnicity (the principle of self-identification and the practice of using proxies).  

As part of its dissemination outcomes, the BeSEC project presented Shots on Security, a virtual photo exhibition by TerraProject photographers. It follows the relationship between threats to security in contemporary European society and changes in the urban landscape. Among others, the exhibition also contains photos of the (security) effects of corona measures. The virtual exhibition can be accessed here.   

For more information on the project, please visit the Project website

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