Who are the humans behind human rights? 

An ERC (UKRI-funded) research project led by Dr Agnieszka Kubal, Associate Professor, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford University

This five-year research breaks new ground in studying the unprecedented human rights mobilisation in five countries of Eastern Europe – Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, and Russia – whose citizens until recently brought more than fifty per cent of all the claims to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). 

This research is incredibly timely and urgent: while Russia has recently ceased being part of the European Convention system, the human rights lawyers keep pursuing justice for abuses at the international level. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has led to war-related human rights violations and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, requiring the involvement of the international human rights community. Meanwhile, in Poland and Hungary, human rights are being mobilised to counter democratic backsliding, and in Romania, to address the legacy of violent transitions.

HuRiEE

Book Announcement

The first research monograph resulting from the project has been contracted with UCL Press (in Open Access). While there are many books about the institutionalisation of the European Convention of Human Rights in Eastern Europe and the corresponding legal alignments, our book does a different thing. We tell a powerful and gripping story of the Convention as seen from the perspective of its everyday users: lawyers, applicants, judges, and civil rights activists: the humans behind Human Rights. 

This book enriches our understanding of human rights mobilisation by examining it through the lens of the ‘law in everyday life’ paradigm, offering a more nuanced understanding of how human rights are lived and contested outside formal institutions.

Link arrow icon

Publications

Articles

Kubal, A. (2024) Judicial relational legal consciousness: authoritarian backsliding as a catalyst of change, Journal of Law and Society, 24(1): 1-21

Kubal, A. (2024) Queer coalition? The crisis of justice in Poland and the LGBT rights before the Polish courts, Europe-Asia Studies, 76(9): 1347-1370

Kubal, Agnieszka; Mrowicki, Marcin; (2024) Pushback or Backlash against the European Court of Human Rights?, Russian Politics, 9(1): 135-159

Kubal, A. (2023) Who Are the Humans Behind Human Rights in Poland? Preliminary Remarks on a Sociological Profile of Victims Before the ECtHR, European Court Review, 11: 58-69 

Kubal, A. (2023) The Women’s Complaint: sociolegal mobilization against authoritarian backsliding following the 2020 abortion law in Poland, Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 31(3): 585-605 

Kubal, A. (2023) Dissenting Consciousness: A Socio-Legal Analysis of Russian Migration Cases before the European Court of Human Rights, The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Civic and Political Studies, 18(2): 57-77

Huszka, B. (2023) Restitutio Interruptus: Minority Churches, Property Rights and Europeanisation in Romania, Europe-Asia Studies, 75(9): 1453–1474

 

Conference papers

Kubal, A., Huszka, B, Oliinyk H, and D. Shedov (2025) We Are the 99% – Comparative Legal Culture of the Denied Claimants before the European Court of Human Rights. Paper Session of RCSL WG Comparative Legal Culture, part of the RCSL Sessions at the V ISA Forum, Knowing Justice in the Anthropocene, Rabat, Morocco, 6-11 July

Huszka, B. (2025) The Legal Complex: Professionalization of Human Rights in Hungary and Romania, ISA Forum, Knowing Justice in the Anthropocene, Rabat, Morocco, 6-11 July 2025

Huszka, B, and A. Kovacs (2025) Judging Under the Grind of Authoritarian Politics, Conference on Judicial Activism and Resistance in Europe, Brussels, 4-5 June 2025

Huszka B. (2024) Mixed legal framing: Mobilising European courts in defence of the rights of sexual minorities in Hungary and Romania, Gender Wars conference, Oxford, UK, 25-26 September 2024

Huszka, B. (2024) Mobilising European courts in the defence of the rights of sexual minorities in Romania and Hungary, RCSL conference, Bangor, Wales, UK, 3-6 September 2024

Huszka, B. (2024) ‘Like seeing in a fog:’ recording human rights violations in Ceaușescu’s Romania, BASEES conference, Cambridge, UK, 5-7 April 2024

Kubal, A. and H. Oliinyk (2025) Judicial Resilience in Times of War: Ukrainian Judges' Experiences of Maintaining Rule of Law During Russian Military Aggression (2014-2025), Conference on Judicial Activism and Resistance in Europe, Brussels, 4-5 June 2025

Kubal, A. (2025) We are the 99% - legal consciousness of the denied claimants before the European Court of Human Rights, Law and Society Association Conference, Chicago, 22–25 May 2024 (Session on Relational Legal Consciousness)

Kubal, A. and H. Oliinyk (2025) Inter Arma, Judicialis: legal bricolage and the agency of Ukrainian judiciary in wartime, Law and Society Association Conference, Chicago, 22 – 25 May 2025 (CRN: 20 - Law and Society in Central and Eastern Europe, Balkans, Russia, and Eurasia)

Kubal, A. (2025), Strategic Litigation and Systemic Justice: Unpacking Human Rights Cases in Central and Eastern Europe, University of Oslo invited talk, 14 February 2025

Kubal, A (2024) Judicial Legal Consciousness in Poland - authoritarian backsliding as a catalyst of change?, BASEES conference, Cambridge, UK, 5-7 April 2024

Kubal, A. (2024) The epistemological reflection on the humans behind Human Rights in Eastern Europe and Russia, lecture, ELTE University, Budapest, Hungary, 2 May 2024

Kubal, A. (2024) Who Are the Humans Behind Human Rights in Eastern Europe and Russia?, Exploring the ‘Human’ of the European Court of Human Rights Workshop, Zurich, Switzerland, 5 September 2024

Oliinyk, H. (2025) The Court Is Closer Than You Think: On the Everyday Experiences of Strasbourg from Ukraine, ISA Forum, Knowing Justice in the Anthropocene, Rabat, Morocco, 6-11 July 2025

Oliinyk, H. (2024) From Silence to Solidarity: The Retrospective of the Human Rights Activism in Soviet Ukraine, BASEES conference, Cambridge, UK, 5-7 April 2024

Oliinyk, H. (2024) Rally Around Human Rights: Case of the Ukrainian Human Rights Lawyers. Ukrainian Identity, Regional Diversity, and Wartime Unity roundtable discussion at the British International Studies Association Conference, Birmingham, UK, 4-7 June 2024

Oliinyk, H. (2024) Search for Human Rights in the Ukrainian Communist Archives, Re(kn)own: Region(s) from Within conference organised by the RUTA Association, Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine, 27-30 June 2024

Shedov, D. (2025) Negotiating Membership: A Comparative Study of ECtHR Accession in Russia, ISA Forum, Knowing Justice in the Anthropocene, Rabat, Morocco, 6-11 July 2025

Shedov, D. (2023) Inventing a New Justice. Lawyer's Reflection on Litigation in Russia without the ECtHR, BASEES conference, Glasgow, UK, 31 March–2 April 2024

Shedov, D. (2023) Restrictions on access to historical documents in Russia, Meeting of the PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, Larnaca, Cyprus, 22-23 May 2023

 

Op-eds and policy interventions

Huszka, B. (2024) The Impact of Enlargement on Human Rights in the EU: Disentangling negative Trends, EU Law Live

Archives
UKRI

 

This work was funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant number EP/X024695/1]. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or UKRI. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Link arrow icon

People

See all people