Book Launch: Intersectionality and Human Rights Law

We are delighted to welcome you for the launch of the book 'Intersectionality and Human Rights Law' edited by Shreya Atrey and Peter Dunne. This collection of essays analyses how diversity in human identity and disadvantage affects the articulation, realisation, violation and enforcement of human rights. The question arises from the realisation that people who are severally and severely disadvantaged because of their race, religion, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, class etc, often find themselves at the margins of human rights; their condition seldom improved and sometimes even worsened by the rights discourse. How does one make sense of this relationship between the complexity of people’s disadvantage and violation of their human rights? Does the human rights discourse, based on its universal and common values, have tools, methods or theories to capture and respond to the difference in people’s lived experience of rights? Can intersectionality help in that quest? This book seeks to inaugurate this line of inquiry.

An audio recording of this event is available to listen to on Soundcloud

Editors of the Book

Dr Shreya Atrey is an Associate Professor in International Human Rights Law at the Department for Continuing Education and the Faculty of Law, based at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights. She is an Editor for the Human Rights Law Review and an Official Fellow of Kellogg College. Her research is on discrimination law, feminist theory, poverty and disability law. Her monograph, Intersectional Discrimination (OUP 2019), which won the runners-up Peter Birks Book Prize in 2020, presents an account of intersectionality theory in comparative discrimination law. Shreya is currently working on project on 'Equality Law in Times in Crisis' funded by the British Academy. Previously, Shreya was based at the University of Bristol Law School (2017-19). She was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence in 2016-17 and a Hauser Postdoctoral Global Fellow at the NYU School of Law, New York in 2015-16. 

Dr Peter Dunne is a Senior Lecturer at University of Bristol Law School and an Associate Member of Garden Court Chambers, London. Peter’s research focuses on the intersections of law, gender identity, sexual orientation and sex characteristics. From 2017-2018, Peter undertook EU-funded research on national trans and intersex non-discrimination laws in Europe. Peter regularly works with the UK government, European Union and civil society. His monograph ‘Rethinking Legal Gender Recognition: A Human Rights Analysis’ applies human rights principles to the affirmation of trans and non-binary identities.

Panellists

Prof Sandra Fredman QC (Hon) is Professor of the Laws of the British Commonwealth and the USA at Oxford University, and a professorial fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2005 and became a QC (honoris causa) in 2012.   She has written and published widely on anti-discrimination law, human rights law and labour law, including numerous peer-reviewed articles. She has authored four monographs: Comparative Human Rights (OUP, 2018);  Human Rights Transformed (OUP 2008); Discrimination Law (2nd ed, OUP 2011); and Women and the Law (OUP 1997), as well as two co-authored books: The State as Employer (Mansell, 1988), with Gillian Morris, and Labour Law and Industrial Relations in Great Britain (2nd ed Kluwer, 1992) with Bob Hepple. She has also edited several books: Human Rights and Equality in Education (Policy Press, 2018, with Meghan Campbell and Helen Taylor);  Discrimination and Human Rights: The Case of Racism (OUP, 2001); and Age as an Equality Issue (Hart, 2003 with Sarah Spencer). She was awarded a three year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship in 2004 to further her research into socio-economic rights and substantive equality. She is South African and holds degrees from the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Oxford. She has acted as an expert adviser on equality law and labour legislation in the EU, Northern Ireland, the UK, India, South Africa, Canada, Malaysia and the UN; and is a barrister practising at Old Square Chambers. She founded the Oxford Human Rights Hub in 2012, of which she is the Director.

Prof Colm O’Cinneide is Professor of Constitutional and Human Rights Law at University College London (UCL). A graduate of University College Cork, he has published extensively in the field of comparative constitutional, human rights and anti-discrimination law. He has also acted as specialist legal adviser to the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Women & Equalities Committee of the UK Parliament, and advised a range of international organisations including the UN, ILO and the European Commission. He also was from 2006-16 a member of the European Committee on Social Rights of the Council of Europe (serving as Vice-President of the Committee from 2010-4), and since 2008 has been a member of the academic advisory board of Blackstone Chambers in London.

Prof Emerita Geraldine Van Bueren QC is an Hon Senior Fellow at BIICL and a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, Oxford. She is a barrister and member of Doughty Street Chambers and was appointed an honorary Queen's Counsel in recognition of her scholastic contributions to national and international law. At the time of her appointment there were fewer than ten women honorary silks. Professor Van Bueren is also a Bencher in the Middle Temple. Professor Geraldine Van Bueren QC held the first Chair of International Human Rights Law at Queen Mary University of London, which awarded her the title of Professor Emerita. She has served as a Commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission with lead responsibility for human rights and on the Attorney-General's International Pro Bono Committee.

Dr Gauthier de Beco (J.D., University of Leuven; LL.M. University of Nottingham; Ph.D. in Law, University of Louvain) is Reader in Law at the University of Huddersfield, and previously taught at the KU Leuven, University College London and the University of Leeds. He has also worked as an expert to several international organisations and NGOs, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the European Commission. Gauthier expertise lies in the topic of human rights and disability with a special focus on inclusive education. He has widely published in the field of international human rights law, including two monographs and many articles in peer reviewed journals, and is on the editorial board of the Revue trimestrielle des droits de l’homme. He has just finalised a new monograph on Disability in International Human Rights Law with Oxford University Press. He has been involved in a number of research projects related to disability and frequently provides advice to civil society organisations.

Dr Meghan Campbell is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Birmingham and Deputy-Director of the Oxford Human Rights Hub.

Chair

Prof Kate O'Regan is the inaugural Director of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and a former judge of the South African Constitutional Court (1994 – 2009). In the mid-1980s she practiced as a lawyer in Johannesburg in a variety of fields, but especially labour law and land law, representing many of the emerging trade unions and their members, as well as communities threatened with eviction under apartheid land laws.  In 1990, she joined the Faculty of Law at UCT where she taught a range of courses including race, gender and the law, labour law, civil procedure and evidence. Since her fifteen-year term at the South African Constitutional Court ended in 2009,  she has amongst other things served as an ad hoc judge of the Supreme Court of Namibia (from 2010 - 2016), Chairperson of the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry into allegations of police inefficiency and a breakdown in trust between the police and the community of Khayelitsha (2012 – 2014), and as a member of the boards or advisory bodies of many NGOs working in the fields of democracy, the rule of law, human rights and equality.