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Our core activities are termly research workshops during term time, at which we discuss our active research with one-another. This enables us to provide each other feedback in an inter-disciplinary and supportive environment akin to a peer review college. Particular emphasis is placed on the provision of feedback from disciplinary perspectives outside the researcher’s own, which in many cases resembles the background of potential peer reviewers at interdisciplinary journals and/or at research funding bodies.

Calls for Presentations will be circulated through the mailing list and work/ideas ‘in progress’ can be proposed in the areas of rights and justice broadly conceived and from a variety of disciplinary fields. Work to be discussed ranges from grant applications, conference papers, draft journal articles, book proposals, draft book chapters, etc. -- anything that would benefit from exposure to, and feedback from, an inter-disciplinary audience and that allows us to introduce our work to each other across the University.

Events

  28th November 2024, 3pm  -  'Decolonising Climate Finance'

 This year’s COP29 UN Climate Conference, happening in Baku (11 to 22 November 2024) is all about the money. Who will provide the finance required to reduce emissions and to adapt to the climate emergency? A roundtable of practitioners and academics will meet to discuss the outcomes of this conference, and whether they meet the needs of developing countries.

 The Keynote speaker is Mariana Paoli - the Global Advocacy Lead at Christian Aid (an international NGO that fights global poverty) and former co-chair of the Board of Directors of the Climate Action Network International.

  Discussants:
• Callum Bray (UK Civil Servant)
• Anna Laing (Senior Lecturer in International Development)
• Peter Newell (Professor of International Relations)

 This event will be of interest to many students and colleagues. The keynote speaker is currently at the COP29 conference. She been doing a lot of high-profile media work advocating a critical approach to climate finance. She will be able to give a fresh insider perspective on the processes and outcomes of this UNFCCC event. It will also provide an opportunity for students to engage directly with practitioners in the global civil society / NGO advocacy spaces.

 Keynote Speaker Bio:  At Christian Aid, Mariana Paoli is Head of Delegation to the COP29 conference. She manages a team that focuses on climate justice and economic justice, supporting Global South-led movements. Her climate work focuses on the UNFCCC, as well as International Financial Institutions such as the World Bank and IMF. She has over twenty years of advocacy and campaigning experience, having also worked for Greenpeace’s International, UK and Brazil offices. Mariana holds an MSc in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics (LSE), and a BA in International Relations from the Pontifical Catholic University in São Paulo. She is originally from Sao Paulo, Brazil.

  27th November 2024, 3pm  -  'Can International Law and Decolonial Theory Work Together?'

 The Centre for Rights, Reparations, and Anti-Colonial Justice and the International Relations Department's ‘Research In Progress’ Seminar Series are hosting Dr Benjamin P. Davis (Texas A&M), who will be speaking on 'Can International Law and Decolonial Theory Work Together?' The Department of International Relation’s Prof. Gurminder Bhambra is discussant.

 Abstract: This talk invites decolonial theorists to a more robust conversation with international law. At the same time, it invites scholars of international law not only to account for colonialism in their writings, but also to theorise the coloniality of law through decolonial approaches. It proceeds through the following questions: If we look at contemporary developments in international law through the lens of decoloniality, then what would we see? What possibilities (for both fields) emerge? The essay offers a lens to read international law and decoloniality together by situating both fields within what Sylvia Wynter calls the ‘long process’ of humanity.

 Speaker Bio: Dr Davis is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University and a Fellow at the Center on Modernity in Transition. Dr Davis previously held fellowships with the Department of African American Studies at Saint Louis University and with the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto. His first book, Simone Weil’s Political Philosophy: Field Notes from the Margins, reads the mystic Simone Weil as a key political theorist, while his second book, Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights and Decolonial Ethics, presents the poet Édouard Glissant as an important voice for the theory and practice of human rights. Dr Davis’s third book, Another Humanity: Decolonial Ethics from Du Bois to Arendt, will be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2025.

 20th November 2024, 1.30pm  -  'A Discussion with David Denny'

 Barbadian-based reparations campaigner and general secretary of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration - David Denny - is travelling to London to speak at the summit against racism and the far right organised by Stand Up to Racism on 16 November - https://standuptoracism.org.uk/summit-against-racism-and-the-far-right/

 David is going to take time out of his busy schedule to visit us in Sussex and meet with colleagues here and from the University of Brighton. If you would like to meet David and hear what he has to say, please come along to Fulton 114 at 1.30pm GMT Wednesday 20 November.

 This event has been organised between the Centre for Rights, Reparations, and Anti-Colonial Justice, the Global and Media, Arts and Humanities Schools and colleagues at the University of Brighton. 

Past Semester's Events

8th February, 2pm  -  'Confronting Canada's Colonial Identity: the “most decent country on earth” in an age of reconciliation'

 Professor James Daschuk from the University of Regina joins the Centre to deliver a seminar on Canada's colonial identity. The seminar takes place in Arts C333 at 2pm GMT. Those unable to participate in-person can join us online at 

 James is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Health Studies at the University of Regina. His research experience includes the fields of medicine, climate change and population health.  He is currently a researcher with the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit (SPHERU)

7th March, 2pm  -  'German Colonialism in the Courtroom - Law, Reparation, and the Grammars of the Shoah'

 With Dr. Howard Rechavia-Taylor (London School of Economics). The seminar takes place in Arts C333 at 2pm GMT. Those unable to participate in-person can join us on Zoom (link TBC)

21st March, 3pm  -  'Law and the Inhuman, the Inhuman in Law'

 Co-sponsored with Law and Resistance WG. The talk is presentated by Dr. Marie Petersmann of London School of Economics. The seminar takes place in the Freeman Building Moot Room at 3pm GMT. Those unable to participate in-person can join us on Zoom (link TBC)

 Marie Petersmann is Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at LSE Law School. Her work focuses on international law, ecology and critical theory. She holds a PhD from the European University Institute (Florence) and an LLM from the Graduate Institute (Geneva). Marie is the author of When Environmental Protection and Human Rights Collide: The Politics of Conflict Management by Regional Courts (Cambridge University Press 2022). She sits on the Editorial Board of the Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law (RECIEL). Prior to the LSE, Marie was Senior Researcher at Tilburg Law School (2020-2023), Resident Fellow at the Istituto Svizzero in Rome (2022-2023), Postdoctoral Fellow at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development in Utrecht (2019-2020), and Teaching Associate at the Strathclyde Center for Environmental Law and Governance in Glasgow (2018-2019).

23rd April, 12.30-2pm  -  Early Career Researcher Book Proposals in Anti-Colonial Justice

15th May, 3pm  -  'A Relational Ethics of Immigration: Hospitality and Hostile Environments'

 Co-sponsored with the Centre for Global Insecurities, Prof. Dan Bulley from Oxford Brookes joins us to discuss his book "A Relational Ethics of Immigration. Hospitality and Hostile Environments." 

  Abstract:

 To understand the ethics of immigration, we need to start from the way it is enacted and understood by everyday actors: through practices of hospitality and hostility. Drawing on feminist and poststructuralist understandings of ethics and hospitality, this book offers a new approach to immigration ethics by exploring state and societal responses to immigration from the Global North and South. Rather than treating ethics as a determinable code for how we ought to behave toward strangers, it explores hospitality as a relational ethics—an ethics without moralism—that aims to understand and possibly transform the way people already do embrace and deflect obligations and responsibilities to each other. Building from specific examples in Colombia, Turkey, and Tanzania, as well as the EU, US and UK, hospitality is developed as a structural and emotional practice of drawing and redrawing boundaries of inside and outside; belonging and non-belonging. It thereby actively creates a society as a communal space with a particular ethos: from a welcoming home to a racialised hostile environment. Hospitality is therefore treated as a critical mode of reflecting on how we create a 'we' and relate to others through entangled histories of colonialism, displacement, friendship, and exploitation. Only through such a reflective understanding can we seek to transform immigration practices to better reflect the real and aspirational ethos of a society. Instead of simple answers—removing borders or creating global migration regimes—the book argues for grounded negotiations that build from existing local capacities to respond to immigration.

 Dan Bulley is Professor of International Relations at Oxford Brookes University

2021-22

Spring Term 2022 Events

After Rights? Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics - Project Workshops
Workshop 3: 19th Jan. 17.00-21.30
Workshop 4: 23rd Feb 13.00-17.30

Project Organised by Prof Louiza Odysseos & Dr Bal Sokhi-Bulley

The programme of rolling workshops can be found here (abstracts are available here.) Spaces are limited; if you are interested in attending, please email Louiza Odysseos, L.Odysseos@sussex.ac.uk and Bal Sokhi-Bulley B.Sokhi-Bulley@sussex.ac.uk

Precarity: Aesthetic and Poetic Explorations Project

Workshop 1: Friday, 25th February, 17.00
Workshop 2: Friday, 4th March, 13.00
Workshop 3: Friday, 11th March, 13.00
Workshop 4: Friday, 18th March, 09.00
Workshop 5: Friday, 25th March, 13.00

Project organised by Professor Louiza Odysseos and Dr Ritu Vij (University of Aberdeen).

The programme for the rolling workshops with presenter and abstract details can be found here. The workshops will last approx. four hours; if you are interested in attending, please email Louiza Odysseos, L.Odysseos@sussex.ac.uk and Ritu Vij, R.Vij@abdn.ac.uk.

Benjamin Gonzalez O'Brien, ‘Sanctuary Cities: The Racial Politics of Refuge', 2nd Mar. 16.00-18.00 C-RAJ & RiP Zoom seminar (Zoom link TBC)

Daniel Whelan, ‘Toward a UN Convention on the Right to Development’, 24th Mar. 15.00-17.00, Zoom seminar (Zoom link TBC) 

Autumn Term 2021 Events

10^th November, 09.00-13.30, Online Workshop

After Rights? Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics - Project Workshop 1

Project Organised by Prof Louiza Odysseos & Dr Bal Sokhi-Bulley

The programme of rolling workshops can be found here (abstracts are available here.) Spaces are limited; if you are interested in attending, please email Louiza Odysseos, L.Odysseos@sussex.ac.uk and Bal Sokhi-Bulley B.Sokhi-Bulley@sussex.ac.uk 

17^th November, 15.00-17.00, Arts C333,

Christine Schwoebel-Patel, University of Warwick, Marketing Global Justice: The Political Economy of International Criminal Law

Book talk co-sponsored with International Relations Department, the Centre for Global Political Economy and the Sussex Law School.

24^th November Online Webinar

Register on EventBrite for this book launch event co-sponsored with CAIT [hyperlink   ]

30^th November, 13.00-15.00, Fulton 214

Human Rights and International Development Research Outline / PhD Seminar

Co-sponsored with the School of Global Studies. Presenters: Megan Cooke, , Cassie Biggs and Shaheenur Alam

8^th December 2021, Online Workshop

After Rights? Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics - Project Workshop 1

Project Organised by Prof Louiza Odysseos & Dr Bal Sokhi-Bulley

The programme of rolling workshops can be found here (abstracts are available here.) Spaces are limited; if you are interested in. attending, please email Louiza Odysseos, L.Odysseos@sussex.ac.uk and Bal Sokhi-Bulley B.Sokhi-Bulley@sussex.ac.uk

2020-21

Thursday 18 March, 12.30-2pm:

Joint session with Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies and the Critical Theory Cluster on the theme of ‘The Neoliberal and the Colonial’

Louiza Odysseos, ‘Extractive Modes of World-Disclosure and Historical Fungibility: Towards a Critique of Neoliberal Disposability’

Friday 26 February, 2-4 pm:

, with work being presented by:

Fabio Petito & Scott Thomas, ‘Religious Engagement in International Relations: Instrumentalization, Religionization or Postsecular Prophetic Innovation?’ (draft paper)

Stefan Elbe, ‘Who Owns a Deadly Virus? Vital Abandonment, Specimal Friction and the Matrix of the International’ (draft paper)

Raffaela Puggioni, ‘Subjectivity and Change: Foucault, Rancière and Sartre’ (book proposal)

Meeting ID: 984 4652 9585; Passcode: Justice

February 2021:

Discussion of 'Genealogy of The Human'. 

Speaker: Megan Cooke

January 2021: 

Research workshop on the theme of 'friendship, solidarity and justice'. 

Speakers: Bal Sokhi-Bulley, Louiza Odysseos, Peter West Oram

13 November 2020: 

Research workshop to discuss 'picking up the pieces of our research agendas' after the first lockdown

Faculty small grants awarded

David Karp, July 2018, attendance of the Annual meetings of the Academic Council on the UN System, Rome, and presentation of paper on ‘UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Strengths and Weaknesses’

Louiza Odysseos, June 2018, attendance of the First UK Sylvia Wynter conference, Kings College London, and presentation of paper on ‘Colonial Legacies, Decolonizing Practices of Struggle and the “Reparative" Possibilities of Sociogeny in Wynter and Fanon: Toward an ‘Ethics of/in the Flesh?’

Postgraduate Research Bursaries awarded

2018

Po-Han Lee, attendance of workshop on ‘Gender, Health & Sustainable Development: The Role of International Law’, 6-7 May at University College Groningen, Germany

2017

Georgina Christou, attendance of the British International Studies Association annual conference and presentation of ‘‘Radicalization of youth and community formation: Exploring the politics of a pupils’ collective in Nicosia, Cyprus’