SCGA Connections Award funds relaunch events for the Glasgow Human Rights Network

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Author: SCGA
An article from SCGA editorial team. 

By Dr David Scott, Postdoctoral Researcher in International Law & Governance, University of Glasgow.

Formed in 2011, the Glasgow Human Rights Network aims to support human rights teaching and research across the University of Glasgow, Strathclyde University, Glasgow Caledonian University, and the University of the West of Scotland, as well as facilitating external knowledge exchange between academics, practitioners, government, and civil society within Scotland and beyond.

Having fallen dormant during the COVID-19 pandemic, the network secured a Scottish Council for Global Affairs (SCGA) Connections Award to organise two relaunch events—one for civil society and one for early career researchers—to ask how the relaunched network could best support the range of human rights work being undertaken across Glasgow and Scotland today.

Keynote panel presentation with (left-right) Dr David Scott, Dr Elaine Webster, Prof Bruce Adamson, and Mhairi Snowden.

Community Re-launch event – 26 April 2024

Our April relaunch event focused on engaging with civil society from across Scotland. More than 50 third sector and community and activist groups joined us at the Albany Centre to discuss how academics and civil society could best work together.

Presentations from Reach Advocacy and members of the Glasgow Human Rights Network’s Working Group helped focus our discussions on how academics and community groups could collaborate together, as well as identifying obstacles in getting these two sectors together, and groups worked together to find areas for future work for the network.

Participants at the community re-launch event at the Albany Centre, Glasgow.

Participants at the community re-launch event at the Albany Centre, Glasgow.

A participant survey helped identify proposals for next steps for the network, including the suggestion to produce a Rolodex of academic expertise and topic-specific working groups to help civil society and academia work together on concrete policy areas. SCGA funding helped us not only to hire the venue but also provide for an interpreter for the event and participation vouchers for community groups, ensuring wide accessibility.

Early Career Work-in-Progress Workshop – 13 June 2024

Our second event in June engaged with early career researchers across our four network universities, to provide a space for those at early stages in their careers to forge new connections and discuss how the network could support their research. More than 20 researchers from across Scottish universities joined us to hear three panels of papers:

  • Panel 1: Human Rights and Criminal Justice, chaired by Ms. Conor Hill, Glasgow Caledonian University

    – Tordue Simon Targema, Visiting Postgraduate Research Student, Department of Sociology, School of Social & Political Science, University of Glasgow, presenting on ‘Nigerian Press Framing of the #EndSARS Protest as a Youth Revolution: A Critical Discourse Analysis’

    – Olivia Benítez, PhD student in Criminology/Law at the Department of Public Law, University of Girona, Spain, and visiting PhD student at Strathclyde University Law School (Centre for Law, Crime and Justice), presenting on ‘Guilty Pleas and the right to a fair trial: The risks of an efficiency-driven system’
  • Panel 2: Human Rights and Internationalisation, chaired by Dr. Andrea Varga, University of Glasgow

    – Mengyi Dong, PhD student at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, presenting on ‘Working hours and pay: Its discourse and justification’

    – Héloïse Guichardaz, PhD student at the Glasgow Centre for International Law and Security, School of Law, University of Glasgow, presenting on ‘The challenges of a human rights-based challenge to the UN’s absolute immunity’
  • Panel 3: Human Rights and Labour Rights, chaired by Dr. Yingru Li, University of Glasgow

    – Cassandra Lippert, PhD student at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, presenting on ‘“You can’t live on claps”: A scoping review on the intersectional factors shaping overseas nurses’ precarious employment in the UK’

    – Jiaheng Deng, PhD student at the School of Law, University of Glasgow, presenting on ‘Regulating unpaid care under the work-life balance: erased from history, confined in the institution’

The network also organised a keynote panel on Human Rights Work in Practice with Dr Elaine Webster (Reader in Law and Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights Law at Strathclyde University’s School of Law); Prof. Bruce Adamson (Professor of Practice at the University of Glasgow’s School of Law and Former Children and Young People’s Commissioner), and Mhairi Snowden (Director of the Human Rights Consortium Scotland), chaired by Dr David Scott (University of Glasgow).

This discussion focused on successes and challenges in academic and civil society collaboration on human rights matters, which was recorded as a future episode of the SCGA Podcast series.

Next steps for the network

The network’s working group will now meet to take forward the discussions from both events and plan the Network’s next steps as an organisation. Anyone interested in joining the Network or finding out more about its work can sign up to the mailing list here. Academics, Masters, and PhD students across all subjects, as well as practitioners, civil society, and community groups, are all encouraged to join. 

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