Our events

Our speaker series events focus on both contemporary and thematic human rights issues and provide students and staff with an opportunity to interact with individuals engaged in the protection and promotion of human rights around the world.

The Human Rights Centre has hosted a diverse range of leading human rights figures such as the High Commissioner for Human Rights, governmental policy-makers, NGO representatives, and grassroots activists.

Autumn Term Schedule

 09 February: The Relevance of Social Science and History to the Theory and Practice of Human Rights Today and Tomorrow

23 February: TBC

02 March: Defining Global Racism

09 March: Women's Day Panel

16 March: Conflict Hub

 You can follow the series on Twitter with #essexhrc

2021 Speaker Series

You can catch up on all of last year's speaker series here.

The online event series, Right On, is co-coordinated by the Geneva Academy, the Geneva Human Rights Platform, the Universal Rights Group, the Essex Human Rights Centre, and the Geneva Internet Platform.

Each year we invite leading experts from around the world to give our Human Rights Annual Lecture. The event is open to students, staff and members of the public.

Despite its large population and political importance, Asia is frequently neglected in human rights education in the UK. There are many reasons for this, one being the absence of a regional human rights mechanism for Asia.

In response to this gap, Human Rights Centre students organise our annual Human Rights in Asia Conference. Each year student convenors select different but timely human rights issues related to Asia and invite experts from the region and beyond to address these topics.

The conference is an excellent opportunity for participants to meet and network with other students, researchers and human rights professionals interested in human rights issues in Asia. As well as deepening their understanding of human rights in Asia, the event also helps our student convenors to gain practical skills in conference organisation, a very useful asset for their future careers.

The Human Rights Centre is a core partner in the hosting of the Postgraduate Research Students’ conference. The conference is aimed at attracting research students from different disciplines and at all levels of study related to human rights, the conference is open for participation to students from any institution internationally. The Postgraduate Research Students’ conference is co-hosted and organized with the School for Advanced Study, of the University of London.

Each year, to mark International Human Rights Day our students chalk the steps between squares 3 and 4 with the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Each article is written in English, then in another language underneath.

Each year we hold an annual conference with the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights was established in 2017 and provides a platform for academics, practitioners and activists to discuss a wide range of international humanitarian law issues.

The 2020 annual conference built upon the 2019 annual conference, and focussed on the connectivity between regional and global human rights mechanisms. It discussed relevant links with national systems and the overall effectiveness of these interactions in a number of specific policy areas like climate change, the fight against corruption or the COVID-19 pandemic.