Dear colleagues,

Please see below and attached the call for papers by the Human Rights 
Consortium of the School of Advanced Study for its annual conference 
'Activist Scholarship in Human Rights: New Challenges'. The deadline is 
17th of April.

Best wishes,

Yesim Yaprak Yildiz

https://hrc.sas.ac.uk/about-us/news/call-papers-activist-scholarship-human-rights


CALL FOR PAPERS

ACTIVIST SCHOLARSHIP IN HUMAN RIGHTS: NEW CHALLENGES

Wednesday 28th June 2017

Senate House, School of Advanced Study, University of London

This conference aims to facilitate a productive exchange between 
scholars and activists, working within the broad interdisciplinary field 
of human rights, on the epistemological, methodological and ethical 
challenges in activist scholarship.

Activist scholarship can be broadly defined as politically engaged 
scholarship which aims at furthering social justice. It is constituted 
by a ‘shared commitment to basic principles of social justice that is 
attentive to inequalities of race, gender, class and sexuality and 
aligned with struggles to confront and eliminate them’ (Hale, 2008). 
Offering a new form of knowledge production, activist scholarship 
attempts to bridge the divide between theory and practice and researcher 
and the researched subject. This is reflected in its diverse 
methodological approaches which emphasize direct engagement with the 
research participants at each phase of the research from research design 
to data collection and dissemination. In that sense, activist 
scholarship radically questions what is deemed valid or legitimate 
scholarship emphasizing the significance of knowledge produced by 
communities and social movements.

Activist scholarship brings with it new dilemmas and challenges from 
both within and outside. Activist scholars in human rights often face 
pressure from their peers or universities challenging their 
epistemological, ethical and methodological frameworks. Their 
scholarship is criticized for being value-laden, subjective, and 
politicized and the validity of their research is questioned. Likewise, 
knowledge produced by human rights activists in grassroots movements and 
NGOs are not fully acknowledged. Activist-scholars often find themselves 
caught between expectations and pressures from the activist and the 
academic world. Postcolonial studies pose further challenges to certain 
tendencies in activist scholarship which reproduce gender, race and 
class inequalities and reinforce hierarchies of power. Furthermore, 
activist-scholars researching human rights may encounter several risks 
ranging from political pressure to physical threats from states or 
non-state actors, including corporations.

We invite scholars, activists and NGO practitioners to reflect on these 
challenges including the relationship between knowledge production on 
human rights and eradication of human rights violations and the role of 
the scholar in bringing social change. Presentations can address a wide 
range of human rights themes with a focus on these questions. We 
particularly invite colleagues in NGOs and social movements to share 
their reflective experiences in conducting research, on their 
collaboration with academia, and the reception of their work in academia 
and beyond.

We encourage submissions on the following themes, as well as relevant 
submissions of a general nature:

The Activist-Scholar and collaboration with NGOs and social movements
The Activist-Scholar and contributions to policy and legislative reform
Dangers and pitfalls of activist scholarship
Methods for conducting activist research
Ethical tools and dilemmas for the Activist-Scholar
The Activist Scholar and key contemporary issues
Security strategies for the Activist-Scholar
Decolonising activist scholarship – challenges from critical race and 
gender studies
Using activist-scholarship in the classroom
We invite individual paper, panel and roundtable proposals to be 
submitted to [log in to unmask] by 17th April 2017.

If you would like to submit a paper, please send an abstract of up to 
300 words together with a short biography. For panel/roundtable 
proposals, please submit all details, including the names and the 
contact details of panellists, titles and abstracts of the papers and 
title and description of the panel/roundtable.

Successful applicants will be informed by 3 May 2017.

We welcome submissions from early career researchers and established 
scholars as well as human rights practitioners working in civil society 
organisations, government or inter-governmental organisations

We are pleased to announce that a key output of the conference will be a 
Special Issue on activist scholarship in human rights in the 
International Journal of Human Rights.

The conference is organised by the Human Rights Consortium, School of 
Advanced Study, University of London, as part of its Human Rights 
Researchers’ Network (HRRN) event series. The Human Rights Researchers 
Network is a distinctive platform aiming to promote and facilitate 
research and debate on the issues concerning academics and practitioners 
engaging in human rights research and activism.

The conference will be held at Senate House, School of Advanced Study, 
University of London.

The conference is supported by Taylor and Francis Publishers and the 
John Coffin Memorial Trust.