Human Rights Now – How?

Partnering with the International Max Planck Research School “Global Multiplicity” (IMPRS-GM), FAU professors Katrin Kinzelbach (political science) and Dominik Müller (anthropology) inaugurated an interdisciplinary IMPRS doctoral research group called Human Rights Now – How?

The collaboration was endorsed by FAU president Joachim Hornegger and two directors of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, professors Ursula Rao and Marie-Claire Foblets (shown here in the Nürnberg Way of Human Rights).

The group’s three inaugural doctoral candidates Sarah Hammerl, Alicja Polakiewicz and Lama Ranjous drafted the below mission statement to guide their collaborative inquiry.

Human Rights Now – How?

Our research team draws on political science, legal anthropology, and international law to investigate the multiple contemporary ways in which actors respond to and address human rights violations in mass atrocity contexts. Through empirical research, we focus on the construction of human rights violation knowledge, the way in which it is framed and recognized or contested, as well as the power dynamics that both inhere within and simultaneously surround it. Combining perspectives from academia and practice, we examine accountability processes, analyzing how human rights violations are investigated and adjudicated across various justice systems. To this end, we scrutinize the interactions and influences of different actors – whether focused on legal resolutions or operating in spaces beyond the law – who jointly shape the landscape of international (criminal) justice more broadly as well as the trajectories of individual cases more specifically.

While differing in disciplinary outlook, regional focus, and specific research topic, our group forms a collaborative association of scholars who share a common interest in the substantive issues of the legal complexities and social dimensions surrounding human rights (violations) and justice.

HRN-H? Group