MA Human Rights and Cultural Diversity

What are the founding principles of human rights? What perspectives and methodologies can you apply to human rights? And what are the important contemporary debates in the theory and practice of human rights? Gain answers to these questions, while acquiring methodological skills for future independent research.

View Human Rights: Theories and Applications on our Module Directory

What are the founding principles of human rights? What perspectives and methodologies can you apply to human rights? And what are the important contemporary debates in the theory and practice of human rights? Gain answers to these questions, while acquiring methodological skills for future independent research.

View Contemporary Issues in Human Rights and Cultural Diversity on our Module Directory

What angle of human rights fascinates you? What do you want to study further, with support and guidance from the expert staff within our Human Rights Centre? The dissertation is your opportunity to build valuable research skills and in depth knowledge on a topic that interests and challenges you.

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Want to work as a human rights professional? Using the UN human rights mechanisms, learn the essential skills to become a human rights practitioner. Apply this knowledge practically through engagement with projects by our Human Rights Centre Clinic.

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How does the international system enhance the advancement of human rights? And how does it constrain it? Study the international system and its influence on human rights. Examine the role of foreign policy instruments in promoting human rights. Analyse how human rights can advance foreign policy goals by states.

View Human Rights, International Relations and Diplomacy on our Module Directory

View The Morality and Politics of International Human Rights on our Module Directory

Theories of justice are still being worked on and developed today. You question contemporary theories of justice through applying them to some of the most controversial issues dominating contemporary politics.

View From Cradle to Grave: Social Justice in Childhood, Adulthood, and Death on our Module Directory

This module articulates empirical, comparative sociolinguistic views of language use and conflicts within speech communities, contextualizing them within a human rights perspective. This module surveys important topics in human rights, focusing on the types of conflicts which occur around language, considering the principles upon which they can be understood and investigated, and examining efforts at solutions, as well as locating attempts to identify and make language rights manifest within a broad context of national and international agreements.

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What impact does EU law have on human rights? What are the human rights aspects of EU rules for asylum and immigration? Examine the agreement on EU accession to the European Convention on Human Rights. Understand the scope and content of the EU’s own Charter of Fundamental Rights.

View European Union Law and Human Rights on our Module Directory

How does public international law apply to peace and field operations? What about international human rights law? Or the international law of armed conflict? Understand the institutional law of the United Nations. Examine foundational legal aspects of peace operations, as well as key unresolved legal issues.

View Conflict and the UN: Law Relating to the Use of Force, Peacekeeping, Sanctions & Counter Terrorism on our Module Directory

What are the contemporary issues within international human rights law? How does the UN promote and protect human rights? Gain a critical and contextual introduction to international human rights law. Build your analytical skills in relation to the subject. Discuss current issues and events in group work.

View International Human Rights Law: Law and Practice on our Module Directory

What does it mean to be an international lawyer? Understand the founding principles of international laws. Apply the tools and techniques of legal reasoning to the international system. Understand how the system of international law works and form your own views through discussion of contemporary issues.

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What protection does international law offer refugees and internally displaced persons? Examine legal definitions of refugee status. Understand the guarantees provided for such groups by international human rights law. Evaluate the limitations of such laws by states in Europe and North America.

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What are the achievements of the European Convention on Human Rights? What are the challenges that it now faces? And the constraints? Examine the history of the Convention. Explore how the focus and methodology of the Court is now changing. Address the key states of the litigation of a case.

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You’ll look at how minorities and indigenous peoples are protected in international human rights law by considering the rights that have been established, the jurisprudence that has been developed and the mechanisms for implementation. You’ll receive the opportunity to reflect on the contrasting regimes that focus on the individual rights accorded members of minorities and the collective rights recognised for indigenous peoples. You’ll study the contemporary challenges relating to political participation, conflict, development, climate change and other matters that affect minorities and indigenous peoples.

View The Protection of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples in International Law on our Module Directory

What does right to development mean? How does it relate to human rights treaties? What is a human rights-based approach to development? Study international human rights law, exploring theoretical and practical implications of linking human rights and development. Analyse specific human rights themes. Evaluate the role of governments and organisations.

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Most displaced persons in the world are part of a mass displacement that may or may not cross an international border which has important consequences for the legal framework of protection. In this module you will look at the protection offered by international law to those displaced in time of acute crisis.

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What are the global standards set by the GATT/World Trade Organisation? And by World Bank policies? Examine relationships between human rights, international trade and foreign investment. Study legal issues, plus ethical, political and economic arguments on current topics. Evaluate cases to see the practical effect of linking trade and rights.

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How does international criminal law deal with terrorism? Or with genocide and crimes against humanity? What role does the International Criminal Court play? Study international criminal law and the principles of jurisdiction. Analyse the idea of state criminal responsibility. Build knowledge of human rights in relation to international criminal law.

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You’ll receive an introduction to the protection and promotion of women’s and girls’ human rights under international law. Your focus will be on the universal human rights mechanisms, with some analysis of regional human rights mechanisms, especially relating to violence against women. You’ll consider sexual and reproductive rights, economic, social and cultural rights, administration of justice, women’s rights in conflict and post-conflict, and violence against women. You’ll also look at the persistence of gender stereotyping, theories of equality and discrimination, and the efforts of human rights defenders.

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View War on the Mind: Historical Perspectives on Trauma on our Module Directory

In this module you’ll critically examine the promotion and protection of human rights from the perspective of African political and human rights institutions. Topics you’ll cover include: human rights in Africa; the Organisation of African Unity and African Union; the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights; other African human rights treaties; African states within the UN; domestic protection of human rights; and women's rights.

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This module focuses on the theoretical and methodological implications of the 'cultural turn'. You’ll be introduced to key concepts, and will explore debates about the meanings of terms such as 'subjectivity', 'identities' and 'discourse'. You will also explore the possibilities opened by cultural approaches, as reflected in new and emerging debates and themes such as childhood, public and private, sex, the psyche, and memory.

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In this module you’ll study the work carried out by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court, which are usually referred to as the two bodies of the Inter-American System. In particular you’ll study the rights to life, humane treatment, personal liberty, fair trial, judicial guarantees, indigenous rights, violence against women, non-discrimination and equality, socio-economic rights, and the right to reparation. Films and guest speakers will enhance your understanding of the achievements, challenges and impact of the System.

View The Inter-American System of Human Rights on our Module Directory

This module introduces the fundamental concepts and logics of poststructuralist discourse theory, including discussions of post-Marxism, deconstruction, structural linguistics, Foucauldian discourse analysis, and psychoanalytic theory. Students are invited to engage with contemporary debates in critical political theory, focusing on the emergence and character of core political ideologies, such as neoliberalism, populism, nationalism and socialism, as well as the interpretation, explanation and evaluation of key events and developments, such as the different ideological responses to the global financial crisis, the construction of new political identities, the role of social movements, and the ecological crisis.

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What are the human rights responsibilities of private companies? And what about public or private institutions financing projects aimed at world development? Evaluate principles regulating human rights and examine how they contrast with principles regulating multinational commercial interests. Consider real-life cases from both national and international courts.

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On this module you explore a variety of questions concerning public opinion: How do citizens acquire information and convert it into opinions? Can politicians and the media influence public opinion and if so, how? How do we select representative samples in order to understand what the public really thinks? How do we measure opinion accurately? What type of measurement scales are available to help us do this?

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View International Human Rights: Theories and Institutions on our Module Directory

The course bridges together topics in international relations, comparative political economy, and economics. The goals of the course are to (a) introduce students to contemporary scholarly research on political economy topics, (b) introduce students to strategic models in political science using substantive applications, and (c) stimulate students to form original ideas for promising quantitative research projects in the area of contemporary political economy.

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In this module you focus on conflict resolution in inter- and intra-state issues. You gain experience in the practical as well as in the theoretical aspects of negotiation and mediation, exploring the applicability of various tools and techniques in problem-solving real cases of international conflict, and making use of negotiation and mediation techniques in role playing exercises and other types of simulations.

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View Gender, Peace, Security and the Law on our Module Directory

Study one of the most important contemporary aspects of political action: the natural environment. You consider the state of the environment and possible paths along which it might change, before exploring environmental policies from the level of individual values, to the environmental movement, to political parties, and finally to the level of international affairs.

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What is the unconscious? And how does it influence the behaviour of groups? Explore how a psychoanalytic approach can illuminate the dynamics of groups and organisations. Understand the classic theories of Freud and Bion, then develop perspectives on how psychoanalytic ideas explain individual and group behaviour.

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European multiparty systems differ in a variety of ways, including how their parties compete and how they form governments. This module compares a range of party systems in Western Europe, Scandinavia and the Mediterranean, looking at the decline of social-democratic and Christian-democratic parties, and the rise of green parties and the radical right.

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What psychological complexities are involved when working with people whose human rights have been violated? How do you, as a worker, interact with people? In what way do wider contexts impact on these interactions? Explore the psychosocial parameters of human rights violations. Engage with issues, debates and literature on psychosocial perspectives of human rights.

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Master the explanatory and practical value of negotiation style, strategies and tactics in the context of theories of international relations.

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Explore the relationship of power, preferences, economic relations, domestic politics and international organisations in relation to conflict and peace. You investigate the underlying theoretical arguments about war and peace, consider the implications entailed by these different theories, and evaluate these using empirical data.

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What are the relevant contexts of refugee experiences? How can academic disciplines help us understand refugee experiences in a deeper way? How can we grasp the multidimensional aspects of the refugee phenomena? Study the multidisciplinary nature of Refugee Care from a unique combination of both academic and professional perspectives.

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What makes societies choose different taxation systems? What drives the selection of politician in society? And how does selection impact on the choice of policies? Study the application of economic methods to understanding the political phenomenon that impact on the choice of different economic policies.

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Who are the key thinkers regarding the media? How did the modern media developed? And what role does it play in regulating society? In discussion-oriented classes, examine the relationship between society and media technology, analyse the economic and social organisation, and study ethics and regulation of our modern media.

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How can feminist and queer theory be used to analyse sociological issues? What impact does gender and sexuality have on topics like kinship, globalisation, digital intimacies, and the body? Explore contemporary sociological developments in the study of gender, sexuality and intimacy.

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What are the distinctive features of less developed economies? How do theories around child labour or inequality explain poverty? What economic policies could alleviate such problems? Understand the issues facing developing countries, examining policies theoretically and empirically. Act as a policy advisor, undertaking research on issues of development economics.

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View Citizenship, International Migration and Human Rights on our Module Directory

What is the relationship between activist art and art galleries? Is the museum really a public sphere, or even a progressive cultural space? How is this space shaped by policy, the market, protest? How much power do curators have to shape culture? Is everyone with an Instagram account a curator now? Each week we will study the changing role of museums and galleries in the twentieth century at the macro- and micro-level: by placing critical theories of the ‘public sphere’ alongside key historical cultural policy documents and case studies of both exhibitions and particular display rhetorics used by exhibitions, from taxidermy to projection-mapping. We will also take a broad view on curatorial work and its social context. We will ask: What is curatorial labour?; how has it changed?; did it exist before or outside of the specific workplace of the museum?; and how has it shaped the museum and society? What is the role and responsibility of a curator today? We will explore how these changing spaces and forms of work, inside and outside the museum, are able to direct, shape or contribute to political and social issues.

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How are work and home life organised differently across the globe? Does gender add to this? Can we challenge our traditional understandings of work and home? As work helps to define your identity, explore the nature of both formal and informal work, using case studies from around the world.

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Can the rise of Donald Trump and the emboldening of the new right across the West be read partly as the result of a collective failure of cultural production? Despite the forces of institutional fine art mobilising against Trump and the ideologies which brought him to power, the constituencies whom he claims to represent remain solidly unmoved. In the face of these failures, what is the role of political art? How can contemporary political artists respond to politics today? And indeed, we must ask: is political art ever effective in driving social change?

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How do we challenge our conventional understanding of crime? And what can we do about this? Examine the history of criminology and learn about the contemporary debates. Study topics like criminalisation, social deviance, and surveillance and punishment. Look ahead with analysis of new work by leading authors in the field.

View Formative Debates in Criminology on our Module Directory

How do we understand crime in our increasingly globalised world? And what about forms of control and criminal justice policy? Critically examine criminological thought on globalisation, migration, policy convergence, punishment, and crimes against the state.

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How has colonialism created human rights problems, now and in the past? And what part did mandates for free markets, industrialism and state sovereignty play? Study thinkers like Cesaire, Fanon, Arendt, Agamben and Taussig. Discuss specific international situations like Palestine, forced removal of Aboriginal children and the war on terror.

View Colonialism, Cultural Diversity and Human Rights on our Module Directory

How have human rights practices been socially created? What social change is likely in the future and how will that change take place? Do human rights vary across cultures? Do human rights offer a basis for rights which can transcend the nation state? How do they accommodate migration and global inequality? Study human rights from a sociological perspective, developing a historical, critical and cultural understanding of the major theories and concepts in light of these questions.

View Sociology of Human Rights on our Module Directory

View The Context of Integration: Origin, Destination and the Children of Immigrants on our Module Directory