International Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Conference

‘The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 75: Rethinking and Constructing its Future Together’ – 6-8 December 2023 – Ghent University, Belgium

Call for Contributions

The 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be celebrated on 10 December 2023. Since its adoption, the Declaration has been read in multiple ways. Some have been inspired by it, others have found it wanting. At this conference, Ghent University will take stock and look forward, embracing a resolute engagement with human rights in their multiple contemporary dimensions.

The conference will put special emphasis on stepping out of our comfort or habitual zones and creating spaces for debating and learning from different perspectives. We invite contributions from scholars, practitioners, policy makers and artists who cross or are willing to cross boundaries and build bridges between academic disciplines, theory and practice, and political action and artistic engagement. Activists, policy makers, artists, and students are warmly invited to participate alongside both emerging and established academics.

The conference is an initiative of the UGent Human Rights Research Network (HRRN), which brings together researchers at Ghent University working on human rights in different disciplines. The network stimulates interdisciplinary collaboration and fosters the societal impact of academic research in close cooperation with societal stakeholders. At this conference, we want to reach out to those who wish to contribute to the collective reflection on and construction of human rights knowledge and praxis.

We encourage proposals for contributions in all thematic areas, in particular (but not exclusively) in relation to the domains of HRRN expertise listed under the conference themes.

We want to inject human rights with new energy, learn from each other and join forces. We shall meet, we shall walk, we shall talk, we shall co-create. Look at this conference as a major brainstorm—or as a big celebration from which you will return with new ideas, new friendships and new resolutions.

Keynote Speakers

• Olivier De Schutter (Professor of Law at UCLouvain, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights)
• Agnès Callamard (Secretary General Amnesty International)
• Marie Bénédicte Dembour (Professor of Law and Anthropology at Ghent University)
• Craig Santos Perez (Poet and Professor in the English Department at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa).

We look forward to receiving your proposals and meeting you in Ghent!

The scientific and organising committee

Eva Brems, Giselle Corradi, Stef Craps, Marie-Benedicte Dembour, Tine Destrooper, Marijke D’Haese, Jan Orbie, Didier Reynaert, Christel Stalpaert, Geert Van Hove