I am professor of church history at the University of Copenhagen, specializing in monks and other forms of religiously motivated withdrawal from the world. More importantly in this context, I am the director of the Danish National Research Foundation Centre for Privacy Studies which is dedicated to research into historical notions of privacy and the private. The Centre was founded in 2017; it brings together historians of architecture, law, political ideas, religion and social conditions. The research team examines how explicit and implicit notions of privacy shape relations between individuals and society across diverse historical contexts. We are particularly interested in indications of privacy as a value and as a threat, and aim to mobilize historical insights as a resource for research an debates on contemporary privacy issues.