International Association for Human Rights Education

Conference Announcement and Call for Papers  

 

Extending human rights education

Friday 19 April 2024 9.30 – 17.00

 Venue: IOE UCLs Faculty of Education and Society 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL

 

 Background

The International Association for Human Rights Education (IAHRE) was established in June 2023 at the 15^th International Conference for Education and Democratic Citizenship (ICEDC) held at University College Dublin. Its goal is to support the development of human rights education research, scholarship and practice internationally. IAHRE has its own scholarly journal, the award-winning Human Rights Education Review, founded in 2018.  

The ICEDC annual conference was set up as a meeting place for scholars, researchers, graduate students, education policymakers, and civil society activists from across Europe and internationally. Since 2019, it has been complemented by the WERA International Research Network on Human Rights Education, coordinated by Professors Audrey Osler and Hugh Starkey which in collaboration with Human Rights Education Review has run an international webinar series. The IAHRE International Conference aims to build on this experience, providing all with a unique opportunity to present and discuss current research and policy relating to human rights education and to questions of human rights within education.

 

Keynote speakers

Our two keynote speakers are:

Professor Sonia Livingstone Department of Media and Communications, LSE, whose research focuses on children’s rights in the digital age

Professor Farzana Shain Geroge Wood Professor, Goldsmiths, University of London whose interests include educational inequalities, education policy, politics and human rights. 

  

Call for papers

We invite scholars to submit papers to this first IAHRE International Conference Extending human rights education. We welcome contributions that review and critically reflect on human rights education, child rights education and the wider area of education and human rights from a range of perspectives, including sociology, education, law, history, politics, geography and other relevant disciplines. Papers concerned with analyses of policy and case studies of campaigns are likewise invited. We welcome contributions from researchers at all stages of their careers.

While we invite research addressing education at all levels, we are conscious that in most societies children and young people struggle to make their voices heard since they are excluded from formal political mechanisms and frequently regarded as lacking the competence to contribute to decision-making processes. Young people also face a world of political and social uncertainties in which information sources are not always reliable. Climate change, terrorism, conflict, hate speech and xenophobia confront them in the starkest terms. Intergenerational justice is the aim of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sustainable development includes ‘sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development’ (SDG 4). Our conference will consider how education policy and practice and education professionals, including teachers. can respond to these challenges.

The following are indicative themes:

• Children’s digital worlds, intergenerational justice and human rights
• Human rights education and curriculum development
• Critical approaches to global citizenship education
• Migration, citizenship and rights education
• Teacher education and human rights
• Human rights education and language learning
• Worldviews education and human rights
• History education, decolonisation and human rights  

 

Abstracts of no more than 300 words including name, institutional affiliation and contact email should be sent, no later than Thursday 7 December 2023 to: Professor Hugh Starkey h.starkey@ucl.ac.uk. All abstracts will be peer reviewed by members of the IAHRE Conference Steering Group. Please indicate whether you would prefer to give an oral or a poster presentation. Applicants will be informed of the outcome of the review by Wednesday 20 December 2023. Selected papers will be considered for publication in our peer-reviewed journal Human Rights Education Review.

 

Registration will open in January 2024. IAHRE members are eligible for a discount. Membership categories are as follows:

Ordinary annual member: £50

Supporting annual member: £100+

Life membership: £800

Institutional annual membership: £250 (with membership benefits for up to 6 named individuals)   

 

Conference registration fees (to include conference pack, lunch and all refreshments)

Early bird fees will apply to all bookings made by 4 March 2024.

Early bird (member): £195

Early bird (non-member): £210

 

Standard (member): £220

Standard (non-member) £235    

 

Professor Audrey Osler

Editor Human Rights Education Review

Professor Hugh Starkey

Corresponding director for academic questions and IAHRE membership enquiries:

Hugh Starkey, PhD, Professor Emeritus Citizenship and Human Rights Education h.starkey@ucl.ac.uk