Conference Programme
Monday 22 June 2026 – Campus Citadelle
| 15h-16h | Excursion – Tour of the Citadelle | |
| 16h-16h30 | Registration | Building B - Hall |
| 16h30-17h | Welcome Talks | Building B - Room C001 |
| 17h-18h | Keynote 1 – Chair: Beata Megyesi | Building B - Room C001 |
| Nagwa Metwally – « Cryptographic Writing in Ancient Egypt » | ||
| 18h-19h | Welcome cocktail | Building F - Room F113 |
Tuesday 23 June 2026 – Logis du roi
| 9h15-10h15 | Keynote 2 – Chair: Alicia Fornés | Room Sagittarius |
| Peter Stokes – « Unsolved Problems in HTR » | ||
| 10h15-10h45 | Coffee break | Room Sagittarius |
| 10h45-11h45 | Session 1 « From transcription to decryption: AI in action » – Chair: Eugen Antal | Room Sagittarius |
| Marino Oliveros Blanco, Alicia Fornés, Lei Kang and Beáta Megyesi, « Joint Transcription and Decryption of Images of Ciphered Handwritten Documents: A Comparison with the Traditional Pipeline » | ||
| George Lasry, « Location Matters: Accelerating Historical Cipher Transcription with Detection-Based AI » | ||
| Lei Kang, Giuseppe De Gregorio, Raphaela Heil, Alicia Fornés and Beáta Megyesi, « Learning to Decipher from Pixels — A Case Study of Copiale » | ||
| 11h45-12h | Lightning talks – Chair: Florentijn van Kampen | Room Sagittarius |
| 12h-13h | Lunch | Dining room |
| 13h-14h | Machine exhibition | Attic room |
| 14h-15h | Session 2 « Early modern cryptology: practices » – Chair: Pierre Saux-Escoubet | Room Sagittarius |
| Marco Vito, « The Secret Writing of Michele Zoppello: An Introduction » | ||
| Camille Rocher, « Cryptographic Practices within Jacobite Diplomatic Networks (1715–1745): A Typology of Ciphers and Keys in Wartime » | ||
| Florentijn van Kampen, « The Codebook of Willem Six van Oterleek: Dutch Diplomatic Intelligence from Saint Petersburg between 1806-1810 » | ||
| 15h-15h30 | Coffee break | Room Sagittarius |
| 15h30-16h50 | Session 3 « Early modern cryptology: influences » – Chair: Dermot Turing | Room Sagittarius |
| Benedek Láng, « Combinatorial Wheels and Movable Alphabets: from Ramon Llull to Leon Battista Alberti » | ||
| Lyle Colombo, « What Counts as a Cipher? The Evolving Role of Shakespearean Paratexts in Cryptographic History » | ||
| Andrea McKenzie, « Was Early Modern Shorthand Cipher? Some Examples from Late Stuart England » | ||
| Carola Dalke and Magnus Ekhall, « Early Mechanical Cryptography and Binary Keying or The Possible Impact of the Damm Brothers on Leibniz’s Machina Deciphratoria » | ||
| 19h30 | Dinner | Brasserie Jules |
Wednesday 24 June 2026 – Logis du roi
| 9h15-10h15: | Keynote 3 | Room Sagittarius |
| Agathe Couderc – « ‘The Entente Cipher Bureaus » cooperation during WWI » | ||
| 10h15-10h45 | Coffee break | Room Sagittarius |
| 10h45-12h05 | Session 4 « Processing cryptology » – Chair: Florette Martinez | Room Sagittarius |
| Raphaela Heil, Alicia Fornés, Benedek Láng and Beáta Megyesi : « Establishing a Document Layout Analysis Baseline for Historical Cipher Keys » | ||
| Alejandra Reinares Guerreros, Giuseppe de Gregorio and Alicia Fornés, « Unsupervised Feature Learning via Convolutional Autoencoders for Cross-Manuscript. Comparison in Historical Cryptanalysis » | ||
| Kevin Knight, « Modeling ENIGMA with Integer Linear Programming » | ||
| Richard Shapiro, « A brief guide to the authentication of cryptanalytic claims » | ||
| 12h05-13h | Lunch | Dining room |
| 13h-14h | Poster Session | Attic room |
| 14h-15h | Keynote 4 – Chair: Benedek Lang | Room Sagittarius |
| Daniel Larsen – « Codes, Ciphers and Cultures of Secrecy » | ||
| 15h-15h30 | Coffee break | Room Sagittarius |
| 15h30-16h50 | Session 5 « 20th century cryptology » – Chair: Carola Dahlke | Room Sagittarius |
| Jip Boer, « Only Gentlemen Read Each Other’s Mail: Over 50 Years of Sittler Codebooks in the Dutch Diplomatic Service » | ||
| André Falut, « Encrypted official telegrams of the Vichy government » | ||
| Dermot Turing, « Collaboration and Collation: Breaking German diplomatic ciphers in 1942 » | ||
| Klaus Schmeh, « The Encrypted Notes of Murderer Petras Dominas » | ||
| 17h-17h30 | HistoCrypt Forum | Room Sagittarius |
| 19h30 | Conference dinner | Restaurant Le Quai |
Thursday 25 June 2026 – Excursion around WWI Heritage
| 8h45: | Departure from Amiens |
| 10h: | Visit of Péronne’s memorial |
| 12h: | Lunch (included in the excursion fees) |
| 13h: | Memorial Tour – Lochnagar mine (mine hole), Thiepval Memorial, Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial (including the trench « St John’s Road ») |
| 18h30: | Return to Amiens |