Let's Talk Human Rights

The Human Rights Center will host its 4th biennial conference the Social Practice of Human Rights Conference SPHR19 on October 1-4, 2019. 

The SPHR conference serves as a platform to bridge the divide between scholars and practitioners, enable critical reflection on human rights research on and for advocacy, and cultivate potential collaborations and initiatives that can be supported by the Human Rights Center and partners.

2019 marks 30 years since the end of the Cold War and the beginning of an era pregnant with promise and potential for human rights, democracy, and global governance. While the world has seen substantial progress, we are facing the potential of a profoundly dystopian future instead of the utopia of our dreams.

Global capitalism drives widening and deepening inequalities. Its dependence on natural resource extraction and exploitation is hastening ecological collapse. Authoritarianism and populism have risen from the rubble of liberalism’s inability to deliver on its pledges. Technology, once promoted as a panacea for transnational boundary breaking and democratization, further empowers the powerful to reshape politics and upend notions of privacy, social life, information, employment, and even biology.

The forces originally designed to lift up the marginalized, level the playing field, confine power, and ensure accountability have been weaponized and turned against society. Critics have questioned the relevance of the human rights field in countering these trends; they have alleged that the movement suffers from neocolonialist tendencies and unfettered reliance on existing economic and political systems. These dynamics have caused a sense of crisis within the human rights community, prompting extensive self-examination and efforts to affirm its legitimacy and counter high-profile critiques.

Now is the time for creativity and innovation to confront these systemic challenges with an ambition commensurate to their scale and scope.  How can and should the human rights movement shape itself in the future to understand and address such complex risks and structural transformations? What kind of strategic directions —  from reform-oriented to radical — should be analyzed and considered? Which approaches, tools, and spaces are emerging as critical? What novel ones should be cultivated? What are the risks in doing so?

In this spirit, SPHR19 convenes to address high-risk threats that present themselves with unprecedented urgency. It will be our task to reinvigorate collaborative efforts with hope and vigor, building sustainable movements and disruptive methods even when it means, to quote Pope Francis, “going against the grain.”

Featured speakers at the conference will include Anand Giridharadas, author of the New York Times best-seller Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.

Call for Papers

Interested in presenting at SPHR19? The Call for Papers has opened and we encourage submissions on topics that address themes and their intersections including:

• Eco-economic transformation: emphasis on intersectional inequality, redistributive models, corporate accountability, and environmental sustainability and climate justice.
• Technological transformation: the implications and promise of artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous systems, technology-based innovation, and the role of digital freedom.  
• Social and political transformation: the power of social movements; civic and feminist mobilization; the role of theater, art, and cultural expressions of human rights; and the inclusion, protection, and resourcing  of social movements, activists, and advocates.

Read the call for papers and submit a proposal here by April 15, 2019.

SPHR19 will feature workshops, roundtables, and panels that place scholars and practitioners in constructive dialogue with one another. Each day includes  a plenary, a keynote address, and a mix of research sessions as well as forward-thinking workshops in partnership with JustLabs and OpenGlobalRights.

For more information, including speakers and program details, visit our go.udayton.edu/hrc and stay tuned for more exciting news and updates about SPHR19!