Human Rights, Power, and Accountability - University of Birmingham

This theme examines the relationships between the holders of authority and those who are subject to that authority.

Research conducted within this theme encompasses a variety of subject-matters, with particular expertise in socio-economic rights, the rights of refugees and other migrants, the interaction of human rights law with matters of national security, as well as political and constitutional theory.

This work is undertaken using a wide range of approaches, including doctrinal, comparative and socio-legal methods, and drawing upon a number of related disciplines, including media studies, medical ethics, moral and political philosophy, political science and queer theory.

Staff researching in this theme

Shaimaa Abdelkarim’s research addresses questions on coloniality, human rights and resistance.
Kate Bedford's research focuses on law and development, and gender and political economy. She also researches gambling law and regulation.
Meghan Campbell is a Reader in International Human Rights Law exploring women's equality particularly in relation to gender-based poverty.
Rachel Charman - Chinese; Language and Law; Equivalence in translation; effect of English judgments on Chinese judicial reform; course design including SQE.
Peter Coe's research focusses on the changing nature of journalism, and how this impacts on free speech, the public sphere and democracy, and press freedom and regulation.
Fiona de Londras' work concerns the role and function of rights in contentious policy fields, inquiring into how (if at all) rights shape the making of law and policy in complex contexts of, for example, counter-terrorism, reproductive rights, and the implementation of international legal standards.
Damian Gonzalez-Salzberg's research focuses on human rights, international law, research methods, and gender, sexuality and law.
Natasha Gooden's research addresses public international law and advancements in technology, with a focus on cyber operations, conflict and human rights.
Alan Greene's research focuses on emergency powers, human rights, counter-terrorism, and constituent power.
Dr Kathrin Hamenstädt's research focuses on European Union law, human rights law, and migration law.
Rosie Harding uses empirical and conceptual socio-legal methods to investigate the place of law in everyday life, with a focus on social justice, family law and disability law.
Jason Haynes' research critiques the power asymmetries inherent in select areas of international law and their implications of these asymmetries for vulnerable communities, and explores the emancipatory potential of law and policy to challenge these asymmetries.
Atina Krajewska is a health lawyer specialising in global health law and sexual and reproductive justice, developing the sociology of health law.
The main focus of Alex Latham-Gambi’s research is in constitutional theory, but he is also interested in legal and political philosophy more generally, as well as UK public law and housing law.
Natasa Mavronicola's research examines various dimensions of human rights law and practice, including the nature and scope of absolute rights, the (non-paradigmatic) interpretation of key human rights such as the right to life and the right not to be tortured or ill-treated, and the relationship between human rights and state penality.
Gearóidín McEvoy's research looks at human rights and equality for Deaf people, sign language users and minority language users
Kieren McGuffin's research focuses on domestic and international asylum law and policy.
Lydia Morgan's research focuses on conceptual analysis and critiques of secrecy, transparency, accountability, national security and counter-terrorism.
Professor Alexander Orakhelashvili specialises in all areas of international law.
Lucía Berro Pizzarossa is a British Academy International Fellow at Birmingham Law School and an Affiliated researcher of the Global Health and Rights Project at The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.
Rishika Sahgal's research focuses on the place of the people in constitutional interpretation; economic and social rights; demolition of homes, displacement of people and their resistance; from Global South and anticolonial perspectives.
Mohammad Shahabuddin researches in international law and human rights with special focus on history and theory, postcolonial statehood, minority rights, and the right to self-determination.
Silvana Tapia Tapia develops an anticolonial feminist critique of penal systems and international human rights, foregrounding the practices of anti-carceral social movements.
Chris Thornhill is an interdisciplinary researcher with research interests in the sociology of law, comparative constitutional law and legal theory.
Felix E Torres' research focuses on economic and social rights and reparations in post-conflict societies, including transitional justice.
Ben Warwick's research explores how economic factors and crises affect human rights (and especially socio-economic rights).

Colleagues have published in leading journals, such as the Human Rights Law Review, the Modern Law Review and the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, and have released monographs with major publishers, including Hart Publishing and Bristol, Cambridge and Oxford University Presses.

They have also provided expert evidence to a number of governmental and international bodies, including the UK Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Irish Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Council of Europe. The quality of their research has been recognised with a number of awards, including the Mauro Cappelletti Prize, the Philip Leverhulme Prize and the Peter Birks Prize.