Cryptology and social life
Cryptology and Social Life
The Cryptology and Social Life project brings together four research communities at NTNU: the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology (IIK), the Department of Mathematical Sciences (IMF), the Department of Computer Science (IDI), and the Department of Sociology and Political Science (ISS). Spanning the Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (IE) and the Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences (SU), the team unites expertise in cryptography, information security, human-centric cybersecurity, the digitalization of organizations and public-sector infrastructures, and ethnography. This combination allows us to study digital infrastructures not as purely technical systems but as an interwoven challenge across technology, organization, and society, examining how secure and privacy-preserving cryptographic systems are designed, deployed, governed, and ultimately trusted and used.
Master's Thesis Supervision
Tjerand Silde and Katrien de Moor jointly supervised the master's thesis of Eirik Gjerde Buset during 2025/26. Eirik wrote his thesis on the social and technical challenges that arise when cryptographic evidence is presented in court, and he interviewed judges, lawyers, police investigators, and others to understand how this affects the fairness and transparency of criminal cases.
Workshop
We organized a workshop at NTNU in Trondheim on December 11 and 12, 2025. Check out the program here.
London Visit
We visited the Social Foundations of Cryptography research group in London in February 2025 to learn about their work and share experiences.
Seed Funding
We are excited to announce that we have received 200 KNOK in seed funding from the NTNU Community strategic area to launch the project.