Black Lives Matter podcast series
The guiding principle of the Oxford Human Rights Hub (OxHRH), based in the Law Faculty at the University of Oxford, is that human rights are immeasurably strengthened by empowering diverse voices to share best practice and by connecting human rights lawyers and activists across the world. Anti-racism is at our core, and we are particularly committed to providing a platform for our Black brothers and sisters protesting to realise their basic rights.
Recently, the horrific murder of George Floyd in the United States turned worldwide attention toward the scourge of endemic police brutality perpetrated against Black communities and communities of colour. It also exposed the complicit cruelty of White indifference. These are not new issues. We can all do better, and we can all do something in our small corners of the world to support this imperative.
In this spirit, the OxHRH is launching a new podcast series in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The series aims to amplify the voices of Black and Brown scholars, activists, and practitioners, and will address a breadth of issues including police brutality and the decolonisation of academic settings.
The series is part of RightsUp, the long-running podcast from OxHRH. RightsUp explores the pressing human rights issues of the day through interviews with experts, academics, practising lawyers, activists and policy makers at the forefront of tackling global human rights questions. Our podcast series are envisaged, researched, conducted and edited by our graduate student community, in a creative and rich interchange. We have a wide global audience. We have 17,000 Twitter followers; 6990 Facebook followers; 22,000 unique website views a month and an international mailing list of almost 1000 subscribers. Our 32 RightsUp podcast episodes are available across all major podcasting platforms and have attracted over 39,000 streams and downloads. The Black Lives Matter series will be published from October 2020 on Spotify, Soundcloud and the OxHRH website.
We also want to acknowledge the long legacy of work that has collectively – across time and disciplines – built and bolstered the foundations of the Black Lives Matter movement. Now is the time to listen, learn, support, and amplify.
At the Hub, we have worked tirelessly to build a diverse community of scholarship and practice to call upon to share expertise. But we also know that we cannot become complacent, and we must constantly ask: who is missing? We hope we can answer by making space – for others to be seen and heard.
For any enquiries, please contact oxfordhumanrightshub@law.ox.ac.uk.