How to stop torture

Mel Nowicki from the School of Social Sciences writes: 

As part of our School's new Centre for Environment and Society, myself and Tom Chambers are developing a research cluster on the theme of Space & Temporality. As a cluster we hope to draw in disciplinary positionalities from across the social sciences including Human Geography, Social/Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, International Relations and Politics as well as aligned fields such as architecture, history, art and theatre. The cluster will launch officially in the new year (look out for updates!), but we are happy to announce that we are running a short seminar series this semester by way of introduction. 

Our first seminar will take place next Thursday 22nd October at 2-3pm, with a talk by Dr Richard Carver entitled ''Stopping Torture: What Works?''. Richard researches and teaches human rights in the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice in the School of Architecture at Oxford Brookes University. He is also editor of the Journal of Human Rights Practice (Oxford). Richard’s research focuses on the institutional protection of human rights, in particular the rights of people deprived of liberty. Does Torture Prevention Work? (with Lisa Handley, Liverpool University Press, 2016) was a pioneering multi-country study of the effectiveness of the torture prevention methods advocated by international legal authorities and anti-torture campaigners. The research found that although many recommended preventive steps had a positive impact, some did not. It also found that the preventive measures most strongly embedded in international law were not necessarily those that worked best in reducing the risk of torture. 

Everyone is very welcome to attend - please find the Zoom link to the event here: https://brookes.zoom.us/j/85173583940?pwd=RVpnZDlRaEY1b1dCcDREWlZGMnRhUT09 

Meeting ID: 851 7358 3940 

Passcode: 1393453612

Podcast on CENDEP torture research

Mural on a wall in Bethlehem (Photo credit: Rory Carnegie)

Richard Carver writes:

Oxford Brookes has been boosting its public engagement through a series of podcasts by researchers from across the university explaining their research in an accessible way. I was one of the first to be interviewed back in February, but publication has been delayed for reasons that may be obvious. Now there is a rapidly growing list of podcasts. You can listen to mine by clicking here. Then follow the link on the left of that screen to find eight more (at the time of writing).

Day of International Criminal Justice - watch now

Here is the complete video of the joint event by CENDEP, the Oxford Human Rights Festival and Oxford City of Sanctuary to mark the Day of International Criminal Justice on 17 July.

Think Human - a world without torture

Friday saw the launch of the Think Human festival, a two-week series of artistic and academic events run by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science. CENDEP's Richard Carver, along with Sushila Dhall, a psychotherapist from Refugee Resource, will be speaking at a Think Human event on Monday 3 February: "Fighting Torture: creating a torture-free world." Click the link for (free) tickets, or just turn up at the door: Abercrombie AB115a, 13.30-14.30.

Ten years of the Journal of Human Rights Practice

Richard Carver writes:

A happy and peaceful New Year to all the readers of this blog. We will be back in January with news of CENDEP’s new partnership with Arba Minch University in Ethiopia, as well as the build-up to the 18^th annual Oxford Human Rights Festival in March.

Meanwhile, while it is still (just) 2019, I wanted to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Journal of Human Rights Practice (OUP), a publication that has been closely associated with CENDEP since its launch.

The idea for a human rights journal that would focus not on law but on the activities that make rights a reality came from the founding editors, Brian Phillips and Paul Gready. Brian was the course leader for the Development and Emergency Practice Masters, founder of the Oxford Human Rights Festival, and my predecessor teaching human rights here. Paul, who directs the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York, was the DEP external examiner at the time. I joined the editorial board in 2016 and became an editor two years ago, joining Paul and Ron Dudai, from Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  Brian continues his close association with the journal as reviews editor.

We recently published a tenth anniversary issue containing a series of reflections on the practice of human rights over the past decade. The issue is free online and it might be worth looking at, alongside the inevitable end-of-year and end-of-decade reviews that have been the lazy stock in trade of the newspapers over the past few weeks.