Refractions is a living repository of digital security research co-produced by an academic team at Royal Holloway (University of London) and communities and groups using digital technologies. Such work requires strong interdisciplinary engagement. Royal Holloway's Interdisciplinary Security Collective is a platform for pushing the boundaries of interdisciplinary work in the area of digital security.

The Interdisciplinary Security Collective (ISC)

The Interdisciplinary Security Collective (ISC) is a hub enabling individuals to come together to collectively explore how (cyber)security, privacy and safety may be understood in socio-technical, cultural, behavioural, and political formations. Based out of the Information Security Group (ISG) at Royal Holloway, the aim of the collective is to promote and support interdisciplinary thinking across a broad range of security questions. The ISC is home to the ISG’s Critical Security Reading Group that encourages interdisciplinary conversations, explores the connections between disciplines and encourages the development of new forms of interdisciplinary knowledge. The ISC is made up of clusters that bring together work from across the disciplines to push the boundaries of thinking and knowledge on a security related research topic. The ISC also acts as a platform to organise and run interdisciplinary security events related to the current clusters, many of them external facing, such as workshops, talks, and seminars.

The ISC's 3 clusters are:

  1. Security Pluralities
  2. Methods Archaeology
  3. Models and Order

Security Pluralities brings to the fore various forms of security thinking, examining these modes of security not only in their own right but in relation to each other.

Methods Archeology shares a range of underacknowledged research methods and a critical reflection on the positionality associated with different research methods.

Models and Order examines the security models used in interdisciplinary security research and question what these models have to say about the formation and preservation of order – whether that is the order of technical or information objects, order of society or groups and communities, or the order of relations between objects.