January 11, 2023
8:30 AM – 4:00 PM
In Person – UConn Storrs

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We’re pleased to announce the second annual Human Rights Close to Home Youth Summit! This one-day summit is designed by youth for youth and convenes young activists and allies from around Connecticut to learn and mobilize as a community. It will take place on January 11, 2023 at the University of Connecticut Storrs Campus.

The Youth Summit is part of Human Rights Close to Home (HRCH), which is an innovative three-year pilot program that aims to promote rights-based civic engagement by youth through human rights education.

We are offering Connecticut students an opportunity to participate in the Youth Summit, a major event within the Human Rights Close to Home initiative. This Youth Summit is created and led by the Human Rights Close to Home Youth Advisory team. This is a one-day educational space for young activists and allies from around CT to come together as a community.

In May 2022, we succeeded in gathering students from a diverse range of Connecticut high schools for an engaging day of hands-on workshops and guest speakers. Our goal was to provide powerful learning experiences that would enable and encourage attendees to take action for human rights back in their school communities. 

Throughout the Youth Summit, students and educators will participate in workshops designed by youth and will interact with a wide range of speakers, from fellow youth activists to professional human rights advocates.

At this time, the Youth Summit is open only to Connecticut high school students and teachers. Please direct any questions to the HRCH Youth Advisory Team coordinators Chris Buckley, Sian Charles-Harris, and Jake Skrzypiec.

Interested in attending the HRCH Youth Summit? Register here by Monday, December 5, 2022.

If you are an educator and are in need of transportation assistance we are happy to help.
Please contact our Youth Advisory Team Coordinators for assistance: Chris Buckley, Sian Charles-Harris, and Jake Skrzypiec.

Students who would like to present should visit the Call for Presentation Proposals form and view the  Youth Summit Presentation Proposal Guide.

Lilly Coleman, Manchester High School
Kevin Maysonet, Manchester High School
Quinn Hope, E.O. Smith High School
Lysa-Raye Mccaw, Bloomfield High School
Skylar Mattice, Brookfield High School
Mac Rodriguez, Brookfield High School
Shirin Unvala-Brien McMahon, Center for Global Studies High School

Chris Buckley, Brookfield High School
Sian Charles-Harris, UCONN Neag School of Education 
Jake Skrzypiec, Manchester High School

Human Rights Close to Home (HRCH) engages educators and youth in the development and implementation of human rights education for civic action. We empower teachers with the knowledge, skills, values, and relationships to become expert human rights and civics educators. We foster youth leadership through experiential learning opportunities that have a direct impact on our youth and their communities. 

Human Rights Close to Home is a program of Dodd Impact, a part of the Human Rights Institute at UConn.

The Human Rights Film+ Series is sponsored by the Human Rights Institute, Dodd Human Rights Impact, and the Department of Digital Media and Design.

Wednesday, November 30, 2022
4:00 pm – 5:15 pm
The Dodd Center for Human Rights – Room 162
In Person & Online

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This talk will draw on a companion article to Christine Sylvester’s recent book Curating and Re-Curating the American War in Vietnam and Iraq (Oxford, 2019). Published in the International Relations journal Security Dialogue, “Curating and Re-Curating the American War in Vietnam” (2018) explores the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington as a “museum” site where “ordinary curators” authorize themselves to re-curate the war to put mortality –not state, honor or soldier heroism –at the heart of it. The piece mixes elements of new museum thinking with consideration of object assemblages composed and left at the Memorial, as well as the personal memories Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk curates into a museum to lost love in his novel The Museum of Innocence (2008). It challenges a field known for abstract theory to humanize its knowledge base by noticing ordinary civilians re-curating inherited versions of war.

Join us!

This event will take place in-person
in The Dodd Center for Human Rights.

It will likewise be available online
on Zoom. Please register regardless
of the modality you plan to join.

Christine Sylvester is sole author of 7 books on International Relations, among them Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It (Routledge), Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey (Cambridge) and Producing Women and Progress in Zimbabwe (Heinemann). She has held the Swedish Research Council’s Kerstin Hesselgren Professorship, a Leverhulme fellowship at SOAS University of London, and was an Eminent Scholar of the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section of the International Studies Association. She was named one of Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations (Griffiths, Roach, Solomon), and today’s article was among 20 pieces recognized for pushing academic boundaries of security thinking over the 50-year history of Security Dialogue (M. Murphy, 2020).

The Research Program on Arts & Human Rights explores how the arts can promote the full exercise of human rights and the consolidation of a democratic culture. It is a proud collaboration between the Human Rights Institute and the School of Fine Arts.

Thursday, October 13, 2022
2:00pm – 3:30pm
Hybrid Event
Dodd Center for Human Rights – Room 162 & Zoom

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About This Workshop:

The Business and Human Rights Workshop is dedicated to the development and discussion of works-in-progress and other non-published academic research. Please register before the event for access to Professor Olsen’s paper.

Once thought to support democracy, contemporary global capitalism is contributing to its collapse. Despite the powerful systemic forces that propel it forward, though, citizens in many parts of the world are pushing back against systems that perpetuate climate change, corruption, and inequality. Simultaneously, innovative thinkers, alongside companies, citizen groups, and governments are experimenting to redress shortcomings in the status quo. Shifts in the way we define value (Mazzucato 2018), efforts to enact doughnut economies (Raworth 2017) or circular cities, and genuine corporate engagement (Knudsen and Moon 2017) each have important implications for a capitalism that is more supportive of democratic practice. In this paper we develop a framework that helps make sense of the varied implications such experiments have for business, trace how one successful experiment unfolded, and offer lessons it may hold for others. Doing so, we hope, will reinforce this trial, inspire others, and begin to help business leaders understand how they might engage in the various paths to a more democratic and prosperous future.

Presenter:

Prof. Tricia Olsen,
Daniels College of Business
University of Denver

Discussant:

Prof. Lyle Scruggs,
Department of Political Science
University of Connecticut

This workshop will be hosted both in-person and on Zoom. Please register regardless of the modality you wish to join. The workshop will not be recorded.

This event is hosted by the Business and Human Rights Initiative, a partnership between Dodd Human Rights Impact, the UConn School of Business, and the Human Rights Institute. It is co-sponsored by the Research Program on Economic & Social Rights in the Human Rights Institute.

Tuesday, October 25, 2022
4:00pm – 5:30pm
Dodd Center for Human Rights, Konover Auditorium

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Members of MASS Design Group will speak on their transformative practice of “spatializing memory.” In projects such as The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Alabama) and the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial (Boston), MASS Design explores new ways to shift narratives, serve as a catalyst for truth-telling, and advance collective healing through the built environment.

Konover Auditorium
Dodd Center for Human Rights
Please register to join us.

Elena Baranes
Senior Designer, Sustainable Native Communities Design Lab, MASS Design Group

Brandon Bibby
Senior Architect, Public Memory and Memorial Lab, MASS Design Group

Morgan O’Hara
Manager, Advancement, Public Memory and Memorial Lab, MASS Design Group

Annie Wang
Senior Designer, MASS Design Group

Elena joined MASS in January of 2019. Her work with the Sustainable Native Communities Design Lab and the Restorative Justice Design Lab focuses on engagement and design that elevates community voices. Her partnerships and projects seek to address the future of Indigenous sovereignty, healing through the arts and education, and decarceration. Prior to joining MASS, Elena worked as part of a Los Angeles-based design-build team. She received her Masters of Architecture from Yale School of Architecture and her Bachelor of Arts from Boston University.

Brandon Bibby AIA, ASID, NOMA, NCARB, WELL AP is a Senior Architect with MASS Design Group. Bibby joined MASS in 2021 as a Space and Society Fellow and currently works and manages research, engagement, and design across various Public Memory and Memorial Lab projects. Raised in the plains of Arkansas, where the Delta meets the Ozarks, Bibby is an artist, activist, and architect motivated by movement, culture, and familiarity in contemporary black and southern spaces. His work is rooted in preserving and developing architecture and dignified design in marginalized communities of color to address the lack of representation and access to equitable and quality design in the built environment. His diverse portfolio includes design, programming, and project management on over 100 preservation, arts, educational, commercial, and healthcare projects. Celebrated for his design leadership and community activism, Bibby was named a 2022 Ones To Watch Scholar with the American Society of Interior Design, recipient of the Alpha Rho Chi Bronze Medal, and was named the Arkansas Business’ 20 in their 20s New Influential 2019 Class. He has lectured, and moderated panels with the American Institute of Architects, Architecture and Design Network, AARP, and currently serves as a Health Equity Advisor with the International Well Building Institute.

Morgan O’Hara is a cultural historian of cities and the built environment. She has worked at MASS Design Group since 2018, where she conducts research to support built projects and exhibitions, and crafts written work alongside strategy for business development. Her backgrounds in cultural research, public history, and collaborative design have informed her approach to socio-spatial research to develop human-centered histories of urban space and infrastructural systems. For the Fringe Cities project, Morgan conducted longitudinal analyses of small cities in the United States that participated in mid-century urban renewal, and while at the Hudson Valley Office, she was embedded in the public engagement work necessary to craft meaningful community design solutions in Poughkeepsie. Her passion lies in elevating creative and community-driven expressions of lesser-known histories in public space. Morgan studied anthropology at Reed College and graduated from Columbia with a Masters in Historic Preservation. She has served as co-faculty for Studio II in Historic Preservation at Columbia GSAPP since 2021.

Annie joined MASS in February of 2018 as a Design Associate and is currently working on a kindergarten in Vietnam and a health clinic in Texas. Before MASS, she worked at Peter Rose + Partners and AMO/OMA in Rotterdam where she conducted research for publications and editing. She received her Bachelor of Art in psychology and architecture from the University of Toronto and her Master of Architecture I from Harvard Graduate School of Design.

This event is sponsored by the Research Program on Arts & Human Rights.

The Research Program on Arts & Human Rights explores how the arts can promote the full exercise of human rights and the consolidation of a democratic culture. The arts not only make human rights visible. They also advance democratic thinking as they help us imagine new futures and open unique spaces for dialogue and debate, ushering us into novel modes of experience that provide concrete grounds for rethinking our relationship to one another. Thus, the arts can act as a powerful means of sustaining individual and collective reflection on human rights, and of linking individual and collective public experience, social belonging and citizenship.

Tuesday, October 4, 2022
2:00pm – 3:30pm
Hybrid Event
Dodd Center for Human Rights – Room 162 & Zoom

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In this Human Rights Research and Data Hub Workshop, Dr. Chris Shay will present his research on human rights abuse in the context of national crises. Human rights abuse tends to increase during national crises, such as civil wars and mass nonviolent uprisings. Under what conditions does this abuse abate or persist? Shay argues that violent challenges provoke much more coercive state responses – exposing more personnel within the security forces to extreme forms of repression and priming them (both leaders and followers) to reproduce these behaviors after the conflict has terminated. This effect is mitigated or avoided when challengers rely on nonviolent tactics instead of violence, leading to less post-conflict abuse. I test this argument with several quantitative methods, showing that nonviolent resistance campaigns lead to fewer post-campaign political killings and extrajudicial executions than violent campaigns. This effect is partially – but not fully – mediated by democratization: nonviolent methods reduce repression by promoting democratization, but the effect is present even in the absence of democratization (the majority of cases). Results also suggest that democratization cannot fully counteract the repressive legacies of violent conflict. By choosing to specialize in nonviolent tactics, therefore, resistance leaders avoid a repression trap that not even democratization can fully disarm.

Join us in person:
The Dodd Center for Human Rights – Room 162
Please register still to receive updates.

Join us online:
Register to receive Zoom login information.

Christopher Wiley Shay
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
UConn Human Rights Institute

Dr. Christopher Wiley Shay is a Post-doctoral Research Associate at the University of Connecticut Human Rights Institute and an International Security Program Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. His research focuses on armed insurgencies, civil resistance movements, and their effects on societies and governments. Drawing on a diverse array of quantitative and field-based methodologies, Shay’s doctoral research shows how domestic civil-military dynamics and international institutions influence post-conflict human rights outcomes. In other words, this research explains why surprisingly few countries (including new democracies) manage to break out of the “repression trap.” His work has been featured in venues such as the Journal of Global Security Studies, the Journal of Peace Research (forthcoming), and Political Violence at a Glance.

Shay also manages the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO 2.1) data project with Dr. Erica Chenoweth and involved in the research team that maintains the Socio-Economic Rights Fulfillment Index with Dr. Susan Randolph. In the past, he has provided analysis on India’s long-running Maoist insurgency (the “Naxalites”) to the International Institute of Strategic Studies. He received his Ph.D. (International Studies) from the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School and a master’s degree (Peace and Conflict Studies) from Uppsala University.

Prior to his graduate studies, Christopher was an outdoor educator and (for brief periods) a wildland firefighter. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Hanover College.

This event is sponsored by the Human Rights Research and Data Hub (HuRRD) at the Human Rights Institute. The Hub seeks to advance human rights research at UConn by supporting faculty and student projects and providing students the opportunity to develop research and data analysis skills that will advance their careers after graduation.

Thursday, October 27, 2022
5:00pm – 6:15pm
In Person Event
UConn School of Business – Room 321

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The social and environmental challenges of today—climate change, income inequality, modern slavery and human trafficking, systemic racism, the human costs of war, the COVID-19 pandemic, among others—are complex and interconnected issues. The systemic nature of these challenges poses risks to investors across their portfolios. They also provide opportunities for investors to think about impact systemically in a manner that promotes sustainability and respect for human rights while also adding to the bottom line. Join us for a presentation and discussion with representatives of The Investment Integration Project (TIIP), a leader in system-level investing.

Presenters:

Moderators:

Stephen Park
Co-Director, Business and Human Rights Initiative
Associate Professor of Business Law

Rachel Chambers
Co-Director, Business and Human Rights Initiative
Assistant Professor of Business Law

William (Bill) Burckart
CEO, The Investment Integration Project (TIIP)

William (Bill) Burckart is the CEO of The Investment Integration Project (TIIP), an applied research and consulting services firm that helps investors manage systemic risks and opportunities. He is also co-founder of Colorful Capital, which is bringing capital support and scaffolding to enterprises founded and led by members of the broad LGBTQIA+ community, and a Fellow of the High Meadows Institute. He previously served as a member of the advisory council of the Investments & Wealth Institute’s WealthBoard 100 and as a visiting scholar at the U.S. Federal Reserve. He is the co-author of “21st Century Investing: Redirecting Financial Strategies to Drive Systems Change” (Berrett-Koehler, 2021) and co-editor of “New Frontiers of Philanthropy: A Guide to the New Tools and New Actors that Are Reshaping Global Philanthropy and Social Investing” (Oxford University Press, 2014). He is a founder or co-founder of two impact investment advisory firms, Burckart Consulting and Impact Economy LLC. His writing and perspective has been featured in Barron’s, Bloomberg, Pensions & Investments, The Guardian, Forbes, Quartz, top1000funds, Investment & Pensions Europe (I&PE), Benefits & Pensions, InvestmentNews, Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), ImpactAlpha, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and FundFire to name a few.

Kilian Moote
Managing Director, Georgeson

Kilian Moote is a Managing Director within Georgeson’s ESG advisory practice, where he is building the firm’s ESG advisory practice. As a social entrepreneur he has helped develop and managed numerous initiatives or organizations at the intersection of purpose and profit.

Kilian has 15 years of experience working with executives and investors on human and labor rights, including leading the development of the labor rights benchmark KnowTheChain and launching two collaborative funds – Funders Organized for Rights in the Global Economy and Moving the Market. Prior to joining Georgeson, Kilian developed and managed strategies on corporate accountability and public policy for the private foundation Humanity United. He has deep expertise on responsible supply chain management, having previously taught an MBA course at the University of San Francisco. As a leading advocate on social and human capital issues he’s frequently called on to provide guidance. He is currently advising The Investment Integration Project and involved in various effort to enhance human capital management and human rights standards. Kilian earned an MBA with Distinction from the Imperial College Business School in London and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of San Francisco.

This forum will be hosted in person. Please register to join us. This event will not be recorded.

This event is hosted by the Business & Human Rights Initiative, a partnership between Dodd Human Rights Impact, the UConn School of Business, and the Human Rights Institute.

October 17, 24, & 31, 2022
12:30pm – 1:45pm
In-person & online

Register Now

We kindly ask that you register to attend
regardless of the modality you will join.

Lunch will be served for in-person participants.

In-person:
Beach Hall – Room 404
UConn Department of Anthropology

Online:
Please register for Zoom details

Multi-gazed Ethnographies: Community Photographs and Narratives of the Heroin Epidemic in Colombia
Monday, October 17, 2022 | 12:30 pm – 1:45 pm
Camilo Ruiz (UConn, as of January 2023)

Activists/Scholars from Latin America at the Intersection of Medical Anthropology & Social Medicine
Monday, October 24, 2022 | 12:30 pm – 1:45 pm
César Abadía-Barrero (UConn)

Grassroots Collaborative Ethnography & Archival Activism as Human Rights Research Strategies
Monday, October 31, 2022 | 12:30 pm – 1:45 pm
Katherine A. Mason (Brown University), Heather Wurtz (UConn & Brown), and Sarah Willen (UConn)

Tuesday, November 1, 2022
12:30 pm – 1:45 pm
Virtual Event

Register Now

The Business and Human Rights Workshop is dedicated to the development and discussion of works-in-progress and other non-published academic research. 

Multi-national corporations’ (MNCs) responsibility for human rights abuse within global supply chains, including forced labour, human trafficking and modern slavery is increasingly recognised in international standards including the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, United Nations Global Compact, and the Sustainable Development Goals. However, there is mounting evidence that voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) mechanisms—such as supplier codes of conduct, ethical certification, and social auditing—widely relied upon to uphold human rights in supply chains are failing. In light of these failures, governments and worker organizations are pioneering alternatives, including home state legislation—through which the home states of MNCs introduce top-down requirements for more meaningful changes in corporate behaviour— and new legally binding transnational supply chain agreements called worker-driven social responsibility (WSR) initiatives, which exert bottom-up pressure to change commercial practices. There is considerable optimism that these twin developments are creating a new wave of regulation to address forced labour and overlapping abuses in global supply chains. How can we best study the effectiveness of these mechanisms and their interactions?

 Presenter:

Genevieve LeBaron
School of Public Policy
Simon Fraser University

Discussant:

Rachel Chambers
School of Business
University of Connecticut

This workshop will take place on Zoom and will not be recorded. Please register to attend.

This event is hosted by the Business & Human Rights Initiative, a partnership between Dodd Human Rights Impact, the UConn School of Business, and the Human Rights Institute. It is co-sponsored by the Research Program on Economic & Social Rights in the Human Rights Institute.

Wednesday, November 9, 2022
3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Dodd Center for Human Rights – Room 162

Register Now

How did the human right to adequate food figure in an intersection of U.S. foreign and domestic politics in the 1970s? This presentation will address the joint history of human rights principles and neoliberal economics in the response of state and non-state actors to global food insecurities. This subject poses questions about the principles and politics that formulated modern concepts of resource distribution and access to the most basic necessities of life.

David L Evans is a doctoral candidate in U.S. foreign relations history at the University of Connecticut. His research focuses on the formulation and global politics of economic, social, and cultural human rights, and specifically the human right to adequate food. Prior to pursuing his Ph.D., David earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Before entering academia, he served eight years in the United States Marine Corps where he deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, Philippines, and Japan.

This event will take place in-person in the
Dodd Center for Human Rights, Room 162.

We kindly ask that you register to join us.

Presenter:

David L Evans
Department of History
University of Connecticut

The History of Human Rights and Humanitarianism Colloquium is a space for interdisciplinary dialogue on issues that require perspectives and expertise from multiple fields. Contributors represent the fields of history, art history, literature, critical theory, philosophy, political theory, anthropology, sociology, and law.