Mormor Karl

The ‘Mormor Karl’ project (‘Grandma Karl’ in English) targets several aspects of automatic pseudonymization, aiming to advance Sweden’s work on open access to research data, namely: (1) semantic and structural correctness of replacements, (2) effects of pseudonymization on research data and (3) its effectiveness in protecting identities of writers.

Cfp: Anonymisation and pseudonymisation – challenges with privacy protection in linguistics. Panel at [IPC20,27 June–2 July 2027] (https://pragmatics.international/page/CfP2027)

We are thrilled to announce that our panel at the International Pragmatics Conference in Helsinki 2027 entitled Anonymisation and pseudonymisation – challenges with privacy protection in linguistics is now accepting submissions [IPC20, 2027] (https://pragmatics.international/page/CfP2027)!

We encourage those interested in the panel to read more on the main pages for the International Pragmatics Conference (see above). The deadline for submissions is 15 October 2026.

The main organisers of the panel are Lisa Södergård and Therese Lindström Tiedemann. Please contact them if you would like some more information.

##Panel description Anonymisation and pseudonymisation – challenges with privacy protection in linguistics

(organized by Lisa Södergård & Therese Lindström Tiedemann, University of Helsinki)

Researchers have an ethical responsibility to protect and respect research participants, their personal information, and any sensitive information that might be disclosed in the original data. The General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR (EU 2016/679), emphasises the need to reflect on how we treat personal information. At the same time there is an increased interest in open data (e.g. the FAIR principles & CARE principles) in relation to open science, reproducibility and sustainability (UNESCO 2021), as well as a need for (authentic) data to train Large Language Models (LLMs) and hence Artificial intelligence (AI).

Automatic pseudonymisation is developing rapidly, but so far guidelines and research have primarily focused on use cases from the health and legal sector while leaving linguistics and humanities largely unnoticed. Within the field of linguistics, data management and ethics have recently gained attention (cf. Berez-Kroeker et al. 2021; D’Arcy & Bender 2023; Terkourafi 2025). In addition, within linguistics and the humanities efforts to empower the participants have been made, giving them a choice how to be represented (see e.g. Deakin- Smith et al. 2025; Lahman et al. 2023). However, there is hardly any knowledge about the effects anonymisation and pseudonymisation have on research possibilities and research findings (Volodina et al. 2025) within linguistics in general, and within fields focusing on linguistic usage and meaning in particular.

Privacy protection is not only something that must be thought about when publishing findings; it is also an important part of preparing datasets. Today there is more and more use of large datasets (corpora) which researchers often hope to be able to share with others for reasons of transparency, replicability but also sustainable continued research. How can linguistic datasets be pseudonymised without affecting their usefulness for linguistic research? How can secondary users be informed of which items have been altered and how without revealing identities?

We welcome contributions which discuss how anonymisation/pseudonymisation can be done in linguistics and how it can affect their research topics. We urgently need joint efforts to build bridges on reliable, solid data for linguistics as well as for LLM-development.

Berez-Kroeker, A. L., McDonnell, B., Koller, E., Collister, L. B. eds. 2021. The Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: MIT Press.

D’Arcy, A., & Bender, E. M. 2023. Ethics in linguistics. Annual Review of Linguistics, 9(1), 49-69.

Deakin-Smith, H., Pilcher, J., Flaherty, J., Coffey, A., & Makis, E. 2025. The research politics of (re) naming participants: A sociology of names perspective. Qualitative Research, 25(3), 629-647.

Lahman, M. K., Thomas, R., & Teman, E. D. 2023. A good name: Pseudonyms in research. Qualitative Inquiry, 29(6), 678-685.

Terkourafi, M. 2025. An ethics for linguistics? What, why, and how?. Linguistics, 63(2), 317– 347.

Volodina, E., Dobnik, S., Lindström Tiedemann, T., Muñoz Sánchez, R., Szawerna, M. I., Södergård, L. & Vu, X.-S. 2025. Towards shared standards for pseudonymization of research data. Huminfra Conference proceedings, 12th–13th Nov. 2025, Stockholm. https://www.huminfra.se/resources/humevents/hic-2025_proceedings.pdf

Acknowledgments
The panel is organised within the research environment project Grandma Karl is 27 years old and is supported by a research grant on pseudonymisation from the Swedish Research Council.

You May Also Enjoy