The Centre for Rights and Anti-Colonial Justice

Activities


Our core activities are termly research workshops during term time, at which we discuss our active research with one-another. This enables us to provide each other feedback in an inter-disciplinary and supportive environment akin to a peer review college. Particular emphasis is placed on the provision of feedback from disciplinary perspectives outside the researcher’s own, which in many cases resembles the background of potential peer reviewers at interdisciplinary journals and/or at research funding bodies.

Calls for Presentations will be circulated through the mailing list and work/ideas ‘in progress’ can be proposed in the areas of rights and justice broadly conceived and from a variety of disciplinary fields. Work to be discussed ranges from grant applications, conference papers, draft journal articles, book proposals, draft book chapters, etc. -- anything that would benefit from exposure to, and feedback from, an inter-disciplinary audience and that allows us to introduce our work to each other across the University.


Events

 

8th February, 2pm  -  'Confronting Canada's Colonial Identity: the “most decent country on earth” in an age of reconciliation'

 Professor James Daschuk from the University of Regina joins the Centre to deliver a seminar on Canada's colonial identity. The seminar takes place in Arts C333 at 2pm GMT. Those unable to participate in-person can join us online at https://universityofsussex.zoom.us/j/95592117644

 James is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Health Studies at the University of Regina. His research experience includes the fields of medicine, climate change and population health.  He is currently a researcher with the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit (SPHERU)

7th March, 2pm  -  'German Colonialism in the Courtroom - Law, Reparation, and the Grammars of the Shoah'

 With Dr. Howard Rechavia-Taylor (London School of Economics). The seminar takes place in Arts C333 at 2pm GMT. Those unable to participate in-person can join us on Zoom (link TBC)

21st March, 3pm  -  'Law and the Inhuman, the Inhuman in Law'

 Co-sponsored with Law and Resistance WG. The talk is presentated by Dr. Marie Petersmann of London School of Economics. The seminar takes place in the Freeman Building Moot Room at 3pm GMT. Those unable to participate in-person can join us on Zoom (link TBC)

 Marie Petersmann is Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at LSE Law School. Her work focuses on international law, ecology and critical theory. She holds a PhD from the European University Institute (Florence) and an LLM from the Graduate Institute (Geneva). Marie is the author of When Environmental Protection and Human Rights Collide: The Politics of Conflict Management by Regional Courts (Cambridge University Press 2022). She sits on the Editorial Board of the Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law (RECIEL). Prior to the LSE, Marie was Senior Researcher at Tilburg Law School (2020-2023), Resident Fellow at the Istituto Svizzero in Rome (2022-2023), Postdoctoral Fellow at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development in Utrecht (2019-2020), and Teaching Associate at the Strathclyde Center for Environmental Law and Governance in Glasgow (2018-2019).


Past events

poster with CRACJ's Autumn's events schedule

2021-22

Spring Term 2022 Events

After Rights? Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics - Project Workshops
Workshop 3: 19th Jan. 17.00-21.30
Workshop 4: 23rd Feb 13.00-17.30

Project Organised by Prof Louiza Odysseos & Dr Bal Sokhi-Bulley

The programme of rolling workshops can be found here (abstracts are available here.) Spaces are limited; if you are interested in attending, please email Louiza Odysseos, L.Odysseos@sussex.ac.uk and Bal Sokhi-Bulley B.Sokhi-Bulley@sussex.ac.uk

Precarity: Aesthetic and Poetic Explorations Project

Workshop 1: Friday, 25th February, 17.00
Workshop 2: Friday, 4th March, 13.00
Workshop 3: Friday, 11th March, 13.00
Workshop 4: Friday, 18th March, 09.00
Workshop 5: Friday, 25th March, 13.00

Project organised by Professor Louiza Odysseos and Dr Ritu Vij (University of Aberdeen).

The programme for the rolling workshops with presenter and abstract details can be found here. The workshops will last approx. four hours; if you are interested in attending, please email Louiza Odysseos, L.Odysseos@sussex.ac.uk and Ritu Vij, R.Vij@abdn.ac.uk.

Benjamin Gonzalez O'Brien, ‘Sanctuary Cities: The Racial Politics of Refuge', 2nd Mar. 16.00-18.00 C-RAJ & RiP Zoom seminar (Zoom link TBC)

Daniel Whelan, ‘Toward a UN Convention on the Right to Development’, 24th Mar. 15.00-17.00, Zoom seminar (Zoom link TBC) 

 

Autumn Term 2021 Events

10th November, 09.00-13.30, Online Workshop

After Rights? Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics - Project Workshop 1

Project Organised by Prof Louiza Odysseos & Dr Bal Sokhi-Bulley

The programme of rolling workshops can be found here (abstracts are available here.) Spaces are limited; if you are interested in attending, please email Louiza Odysseos, L.Odysseos@sussex.ac.uk and Bal Sokhi-Bulley B.Sokhi-Bulley@sussex.ac.uk 

17th November, 15.00-17.00, Arts C333,

Christine Schwoebel-Patel, University of Warwick, Marketing Global Justice: The Political Economy of International Criminal Law

Book talk co-sponsored with International Relations Department, the Centre for Global Political Economy and the Sussex Law School.

 

24th November Online Webinar

Sumi Madhok, LSE, Vernacular Rights Cultures: The Politics of Origins, Human Rights and Gendered Struggles for Justice

Register on EventBrite for this book launch event co-sponsored with CAIT [hyperlink http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cait/  ]

 

30th November, 13.00-15.00, Fulton 214

Human Rights and International Development Research Outline / PhD Seminar

Co-sponsored with the School of Global Studies. Presenters: Megan Cooke, Paul Reiman, Cassie Biggs and Shaheenur Alam

 

8th December 2021, Online Workshop

After Rights? Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics - Project Workshop 1

Project Organised by Prof Louiza Odysseos & Dr Bal Sokhi-Bulley

The programme of rolling workshops can be found here (abstracts are available here.) Spaces are limited; if you are interested in. attending, please email Louiza Odysseos, L.Odysseos@sussex.ac.uk and Bal Sokhi-Bulley B.Sokhi-Bulley@sussex.ac.uk

 

2020-21

Thursday 18 March, 12.30-2pm:

Joint session with Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies and the Critical Theory Cluster on the theme of ‘The Neoliberal and the Colonial’

Louiza Odysseos, ‘Extractive Modes of World-Disclosure and Historical Fungibility: Towards a Critique of Neoliberal Disposability’

Friday 26 February, 2-4 pm:

Rights and Justice Work in Progress Seminar, with work being presented by:

Fabio Petito & Scott Thomas, ‘Religious Engagement in International Relations: Instrumentalization, Religionization or Postsecular Prophetic Innovation?’ (draft paper)

Stefan Elbe, ‘Who Owns a Deadly Virus? Vital Abandonment, Specimal Friction and the Matrix of the International’ (draft paper)

Raffaela Puggioni, ‘Subjectivity and Change: Foucault, Rancière and Sartre’ (book proposal)

Meeting ID: 984 4652 9585; Passcode: Justice

February 2021:

Discussion of 'Genealogy of The Human'. 

Speaker: Megan Cooke

January 2021: 

Research workshop on the theme of 'friendship, solidarity and justice'. 

Speakers: Bal Sokhi-Bulley, Louiza Odysseos, Peter West Oram

13 November 2020: 

Research workshop to discuss 'picking up the pieces of our research agendas' after the first lockdown

 


Faculty small grants awarded

David Karp, July 2018, attendance of the Annual meetings of the Academic Council on the UN System, Rome, and presentation of paper on ‘UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Strengths and Weaknesses’

Louiza Odysseos, June 2018, attendance of the First UK Sylvia Wynter conference, Kings College London, and presentation of paper on ‘Colonial Legacies, Decolonizing Practices of Struggle and the “Reparative" Possibilities of Sociogeny in Wynter and Fanon: Toward an ‘Ethics of/in the Flesh?’


Postgraduate Research Bursaries awarded

2018

Po-Han Lee, attendance of workshop on ‘Gender, Health & Sustainable Development: The Role of International Law’, 6-7 May at University College Groningen, Germany

2017

Georgina Christou, attendance of the British International Studies Association annual conference and presentation of ‘‘Radicalization of youth and community formation: Exploring the politics of a pupils’ collective in Nicosia, Cyprus’