Human Rights Centre Book Launch Event

Join us to launch, learn about and celebrate three recently published books from four Human Rights Centre Members Professor Peter Beresford (School of Health and Social Care), Dr Marija Jovanovic (Senior Lecturer, Essex Law School), Professor Róisín Ryan-Flood (Department of Sociology) and Dr Laurie James-Hawkins (Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology).

Featured books

Professor Róisín Ryan-Flood and Dr Laurie James-Hawkins, (eds) Consent: Gender, Power and Subjectivity (Routledge, 2024)

This book considers the concept of consent in different contexts to explore the nuances of what consent means to different people and in different situations. While it is generally agreed that consent is a fluid concept, legal and social attempts to explain its meaning often centre on overly simplistic, narrow and binary definitions, viewing consent as something that occurs at a specific point in time. This book examines the nuances of consent and how it is enacted and re-enacted in different settings (including online spaces) and across time. Consent is most often connected to the idea of sexual assault and is often viewed as a straight forward concept and one that can be easily explained. Yet there is confusion among the public, as well as among academics and professionals as to what consent truly is and even the degree to which individuals conceptualise and act on their own ideas about consent within their own lives. Topics covered include: consent in digital and online interactions, consent in education, consent in legal settings and the legal boundaries of consent, and consent in sexual situations including sex under the influence of substances, BDSM, and kinky sex. In addition to the editors own contributions, chapters in the book are written by the following colleagues at the University of Essex: Alexandra Grolimund, EJ Francis Caris-Hamer, Veronica Lamarche, Aoife Duffy and Patricia Palacios Zuloaga.

Dr Marija Jovanovich, State Responsibility for ʻModern Slaveryʼ in Human Rights Law: A Right Not to Be Trafficked (OUP, 2023)

This book analyses the role and responsibility of states for addressing ‘modern slavery’ – a diverse set of practices usually perpetrated by non-state actors – against the backdrop of international human rights law. It explores the dynamic between criminal law and human rights law and reveals the different ways these legal domains work to secure justice for victims. The book considers the ‘absolute’ nature of the prohibition of modern slavery in human rights law, the range of practices covered by this umbrella term and their mutual relationships, the positive obligations of states established by international human rights tribunals owed to individuals subject to modern slavery, and the standards for assessing state responsibility in these situations.

Peter Beresford and Colin Slasberg, The Future of Social Care: From Problem to Rights-Based Sustainable Solution (Elgar, 2023).

In the face of major global demographic change, social care policy and practice are in urgent need of radical reform and reassessment. Rising poverty, inequality and pressure on local communities internationally, are also increasing the urgent need for reform. Drawing on the crisis-ridden UK experience as a case-study, this highly original book identifies the limits of the traditional welfare state in taking forward policy for the twenty-first century. The proposals amount to a renewed approach to social care, based on the philosophy of independent living as originally developed by the international disabled people’s movement and subsequently embodied in a United Nations treaty applicable to all in need of care and support. Despite wide international sign up since adoption in 2008 there is little evidence of any nation successfully delivering. For the first time, this book offers both a blueprint for an environmentally sustainable, rights-based approach to social care and a practical route to achieving it.

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