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Invitation to public lecture by Steven Jensen: “The Making of International Human Rights: Rethinking the historical evolution after 1945”

In the beginning of 2016 a three-year European Commission funded research and development project : Human Rights Mutually Raising Excellence was launched by a project consortium of noted global academic institutions in the field of human rights – the Danish Institute for Human Rights, Walther Schücking Institute of International Law (Kiel University, Germany) and Tallinn University School of Governance, Law and Society.

Being the largest project in legal research in Estonia HURMUR aims to focus on new challenges in human rights. One of the many outputs of the project will be the launch of the Research Centre for Human Rights, which will serve as a regional hub for human rights research, a national and regional source of human rights information and an active participant in international research and innovation projects. The Estonian Human Rights Network - a forum for human rights - will be established in connection with the Research Centre, on the basis of an extensive list of local contacts in the field of human rights.

The HURMUR project team is inviting you to be part of the Estonian Human Rights Network and participate at the first of the series of public lectures. A public lecture by a researcher from the Danish Institute for Human Rights, Steven Jensen, will take place on the 3rd of October at 15.00-16.30 at Tallinn University (room M-225).

Steven Jensen “The Making of International Human Rights: Rethinking the historical evolution after 1945”

Human rights history has been described as “a paradigmatic site” for the new transnational historiography. The point is well-taken and shows the potential of this evolving field of research. However, it obscures the fact that human rights historiography has not adequately captured the dynamics, causalities and actors behind the evolution of human rights. The human rights movement has passionately advocated that human rights are universal but then presented a discount version of human rights universality. Methodological, interpretative and ideological conservatism have shaped our historical understandings. The lecture will challenge the standard interpretation, what has also been called the “textbook narrative”, and will present an alternative history that should have relevance for the wider field of human rights research and how we think about both agency and causalities when discussing the historical evolution of human rights.

Steven L. B. Jensen who holds a PhD in History is a researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. He is the author of The Making of International Human Rights. The 1960s, Decolonization and the Reconstruction of Global Values (Cambridge University Press 2016) and the winner of the 2015 Rene Cassin Thesis Prize (Special Mention) and the 2015 Ester Boserup Thesis Prize. He has previously published on genocide in the 20th century, HIV/AIDS, global health and development. Before joining the Danish Institute for Human Rights in 2007, he held positions with UNAIDS and the Danish Foreign Ministry. In 2011, he was a Visiting Researcher at Yale Law School and he will be a Visiting Researcher in Oxford during the Autumn 2016 term. He is currently working on an international history of economic and social rights after 1945.

The event is free of charge!
Please fill in the registration form to participate .

Additional information:
Mariliis Rannama
Mariliis.rannama@tlu.ee