Talk: Social Foundations of Cryptography: An Ethnography Talk

Rikke will give a talk about the ethnographic work underpinning our project at the upcoming Cryptology and Social Life workshop at NTNU in Trondheim, Norway, on 11 December 2025. The talk is titled “Social Foundations of Cryptography: An Ethnography Talk”.

Abstract. Drawing on insights from six-and-a-half-month ethnographic fieldwork with protesters in Kenya in 2024-2025, I will discuss what security means and how it is practised in this setting. In doing so, I will bring ethnography into conversation with cryptography to show how we can use what we learn from ethnographic work to ground cryptographic security notions in ‘the field’, thus introducing ethnography as a technique in cryptography. For ethnography this means establishing a focus on cryptography before entering the field. For cryptography it means putting itself at the mercy of ethnography. The talk will draw on joint work with several collaborators as part of the Social Foundations of Cryptography project.