[iva] First Call for Papers: Call for Papers – LEGAL2026 & CALD-pseudo 2026 @ LREC 2026 (Palma de Mallorca)

[Ingo Siegert]

Dear colleagues,

/We apologize for cross-posting./
We are pleased to invite submissions to the *Joint Workshop on Legal and 
Ethical Issues in Human Language Technologies (LEGAL2026)* and 
*Computational Approaches to Language Data Pseudonymization, 
Anonymization, De-identification, and Data Privacy (CALD-pseudo 2026)*, 
held in conjunction with *LREC 2026* in Palma de Mallorca (Spain) on *12 
May 2026*.

Workshop website: 
https://legal2026.mobileds.de/<https://legal2026.mobileds.de/>

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      Scope and Motivation

Access to text and speech data is essential for research and development 
in language technologies. At the same time, personal and sensitive 
information often prevents open sharing of such data. Techniques like 
pseudonymization and anonymization promise to mitigate these risks, but 
their *effectiveness, limitations, and impact on data utility* are far 
from fully understood. Balancing *privacy protection* with *scientific 
and societal value* remains a central challenge.

In parallel, evolving legal and ethical frameworks – including the 
*GDPR*, the *Data Act*, and the *Artificial Intelligence Act* – 
increasingly shape how language resources can be *created, processed, 
documented, and distributed*. These regulations define rights and 
obligations for researchers, institutions, and industry, and require 
interdisciplinary expertise at the intersection of law, ethics, and 
technology.

This joint workshop brings these perspectives together. It aims to connect:

  *

    *Technical and methodological work* on de-identification,
    anonymization, and pseudonymization of text and speech, with

  *

    *Legal, ethical, and governance questions* around access, reuse,
    documentation, and accountability in language data.

Our goal is to foster *responsible, legally sound, and technically 
robust innovation* in human language technologies.

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      Topics of Interest

We welcome contributions from all disciplines involved in the *creation, 
processing, governance, and de-identification* of text and speech data. 
Submissions may address theoretical, empirical, methodological, legal, 
ethical, or technical questions, including cross-disciplinary work. We 
particularly encourage research on *less-represented languages* and on 
data from *under-represented communities*.


        1. Legal Aspects of Language Data (LEGAL2026)

  *

    Regulatory frameworks and global governance
    (e.g. impact of GDPR, Data Act, AI Act, and other
    national/international regulations)

  *

    Intellectual property, data protection, and governance of LLMs and
    other models

  *

    Ethics, fairness, trust, transparency, and accountability in
    language and speech technologies

  *

    Operationalizing compliance in practice (policies, workflows,
    documentation, DPIAs, contracts)

  *

    Provenance, rights, consent, and licensing of language resources

  *

    Emerging and “grey” areas (e.g. web-scraped data, model inversion,
    model-as-a-service)

  *

    Interdisciplinary and cross-border coordination between legal,
    technical, and organizational stakeholders


        2. Pseudonymization, Anonymization, and De-identification:

Theoretical, Methodological, and Technical Aspects (CALD-pseudo 2026)

  *

    Detection and classification of personal information (PI) in text
    and speech

  *

    Replacement, masking, and transformation techniques for PI

  *

    Utility, bias, and representativeness after de-identification

  *

    Evaluation, benchmarking, and adversarial testing of
    de-identification systems

  *

    Dataset creation and curation for de-identification research

  *

    Low-resource and high-stakes scenarios (e.g. minority languages,
    clinical or forensic data)

  *

    Speech-specific challenges: voice identity, paralinguistic cues,
    prosody, pathology, emotion, etc.

  *

    Cross-disciplinary applications (e.g. digital humanities, social
    sciences, political science, medical and health data)

  *

    Practical experiences and case studies from research, public bodies,
    and industry

We explicitly invite submissions from fields where de-identification 
plays an important role, including but not limited to *Computational 
Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics, Digital 
Humanities, Social Sciences, Political Sciences, and Medical Sciences*, 
and welcome perspectives from *researchers, public organizations, and 
industry*.

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      Important Dates

  *

    *20 February 2026* – Paper submission deadline

  *

    *30 March 2026* – Camera-ready deadline (strict)

  *

    *12 May 2026* – Workshop date (in conjunction with LREC 2026)

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      Submission Guidelines

Authors are invited to submit *original and unpublished* work in the 
following categories:

  *

    *Long papers* (up to 8 pages):
    Substantial, completed research contributions.

  *

    *Short papers* (up to 4 pages):
    Small, focused contributions or ongoing / preliminary work.

  *

    *Extended abstracts* (for /non-technical/ submissions only):
    Conceptual, theoretical, legal, ethical, policy-oriented, or
    position papers.
    Extended abstracts are *expected to be developed into regular
    papers* (short or long) by the camera-ready deadline.

All submissions must follow the *LREC stylesheet*, available on the LREC 
2026 website (Author’s Kit).
Accepted full papers will be published in the *workshop proceedings* 
together with the LREC main conference proceedings.

The *submission link* will be provided in due time on the workshop website:
https://legal2026.mobileds.de/<https://legal2026.mobileds.de/>

When submitting via START, authors will be asked to provide basic 
information regarding *language resources* (in a broad sense, including 
data, tools, standards, evaluation kits, etc.) used in the work or newly 
created. ELRA strongly encourages all LREC authors to *share their 
resources* to foster reuse and reproducibility.

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      Keynote Speakers

We are delighted to host keynote talks by:

  *

    *Paweł Kamocki*, Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Germany

  *

    *Ivan Habernal*, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany

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      Organizing Committee

*LEGAL2026*

  *

    Ingo Siegert, Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Germany

  *

    Paweł Kamocki, Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Germany

  *

    Kossay Talmoudi, ELDA, France

  *

    Khalid Choukri, ELDA, France

*CALD-pseudo 2026*

  *

    Maria Irena Szawerna, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

  *

    Simon Dobnik, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

  *

    Therese Lindström Tiedemann, University of Helsinki, Finland

  *

    Pierre Lison, Norwegian Computing Center & University of Oslo, Norway

  *

    Ildikó Pilán, Norwegian Computing Center, Norway

  *

    Ricardo Muñoz Sánchez, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

  *

    Lisa Södergård, University of Helsinki, Finland

  *

    Elena Volodina, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

  *

    Xuan-Son Vu, Lund University & DeepTensor AB, Sweden

The *program committee* will be listed on the workshop website.

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      Contact

For general inquiries, please contact: *mail at legal2026.mobiles.de*

We would be very grateful if you could *distribute this call* within 
your networks and look forward to your submissions and participation!

Best regards,
the LEGAL2026 & CALD-pseudo 2026 Organizing Committees


-- 
PD. Dr.-Ing. Ingo Siegert
FEIT IIKT-Mobile Dialog Systems
Building 03, Room 325
+49 391 67 500 60
Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg
Universitätsplatz 2, 39106 Magdeburg Germany
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