IdentiNet

This Project was completed in 2010

Identinet: The Documentation of Individual Identity: Historical and Comparative Perspectives since 1500

Why do I need a passport to travel? Why do I have to have so many passwords online? Why should I be fingerprinted to enter the USA? Should there be national DNA databases? Is my identity safe? Questions like these have multiplied in recent years, especially in the aftermath of the events of 9/11. New ways of identifying people on the move, buying goods and services, and preventing crimes have been developed in the UK as well as globally. Do these protect our rights, threaten our privacy, or make us safe?

Website: https://identinet.wordpress.com/about/


 

IdentiNet: The Documentation of Individual Identity: Historical and Comparative Perspectives since 1500
Research Aims

Public debate on these complex global issues remains surprisingly ignorant of the history and ideas underpinning individual identification, registration and pigeon-holing. We think of these techniques as modern – but the fact is that recognisable ID systems are almost as old as civilisation itself.

In 2008, Professor Jane Caplan (University of Oxford) and Dr Edward Higgs (University of Essex), supported by an International Networks grant from the Leverhulme Trust to the University of Oxford’s Faculty of History, established ‘Documenting Individual Identity: Historical and Comparative Perspectives since 1500′. 

Outcomes

The project produced a volume of essays:

  • Ilsen About, James Brown & Gayle Lonergan, eds., Identification and registration practices in international perspective (Palgrave Macmillan 2013).
People