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In Writing and Righting: Literature in the Age of Human Rights (2019) the literary critic and historian Lyndsey Stonebridge argues that, in a moment in which societies are ‘re-organiz[ing] their norms in opposition to human rights’ it is crucial that we seek to renew the grounds of such rights. ‘Human rights,’ Stonebridge contests, ‘are experimental, secular, contingent, to be worked out in each historical and political struggle anew, not by international bodies claiming human rights, but by particular rational and creative efforts.’

The Centre for the Critical Reimagining of Human Rights is dedicated to the exploration and support of such rational and creative efforts. In the face of increasing opposition to the language and practice of human rights, the Centre is committed to their ongoing critical re-imagining as a means of renewing and further expanding them.

We are interdisciplinary in our practice and our methodology, not only as a reflection of the intellectual reach of human rights discourse, but as a necessary means of its ongoing renovation. Our research activity is rooted in the view that the Critical Reimagining of Human Rights will be essential both in its own right and as an interface with research into urgent contemporary issues, such as the climate emergency or artificial intelligence. As a distinctive feature of our approach, literary studies are central, on the grounds that acts of creative writing have particular value in picturing the realities of rightlessness and in enacting the conditions in which human rights might obtain.

From our interdisciplinary perspectives, the Centre’s research addresses the broad theme of the Politics of Rights and is driven by the framing question: In a moment of increasing opposition, how can the discourse of human rights be critically reimagined to enable its long-term cultural and political purchase?

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