In these times of multiple crises - of war, ecological catastrophe and resurgent decolonial contestations of the existing order - it often feels like the traditional tools of global governance have lost their relevance and power. In this year’s Annual Human Rights Day Talk, Siba N'Zatioula Grovogui invites us to revisit the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
Rather than merely a Western, liberal text, he offers the UDHR as a document with a plurality of authors and sensibilities; a re-reading that could help us (re-)imagine much needed alternatives to the current global order and its various crises.
Meet our speaker and chair
Siba N'Zatioula Grovogui is Professor of International Relations and Law and Director of Graduate Studies at the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University as well as the 2020-2021 Nelson Mandela Professor at Rhodes University, South Africa. Professor Grovogui is widely considered to be one of the most influential and foundational scholars of postcolonial and decolonial IR. Grovogui has two forthcoming highly anticipated monographs. The first book entitled The Gaze of Copernicus: Serendipity and the Making of the World and the second Aristotelian Non-Sense: Quilombo, Haiti, and International Morality examine the modern era, from the 17th century to contemporary times to move beyond critique and recasts the foundations of the discipline in light of postcolonial realities: the demise of empire, the faltering of its regimes of morality and authority, the rise of new conceptions of order and socio- political imaginaries – in short global contestation over what it means to live, to be free, and to self- determine.
Shiera Malik () is Associate Professor in International Studies and Inaugural Open Subject Endowed Professor in The Grace School of Applied Diplomacy at De Paul University, Chicago, USA
Olivia U. Rutazibwa () is Assistant Professor in Human Rights and Politics in the Sociology Department at 杏吧论坛.
More about this event
杏吧论坛 Human Rights () is a trans-disciplinary centre of excellence for international academic research, teaching and critical scholarship on human rights.
The Department of Sociology () seeks to produce sociology that is public-facing, fully engaged with London as a global city, and with major contemporary debates in the intersection between economy, politics and society – with issues such as financialisaton, inequality, migration, urban ecology, and climate change.
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Podcast & Video
A podcast of this event is available to download from Everyone and No One: moral solicitude and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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