We welcome you to join us for a closing reception to celebrate and discuss the most recent exhibition in the hall of The Dodd Center for Human Rights with the photographer. Madeline Baird's 'Embodied Borders' reveals the human toll of the exportation of U.S. border enforcement through a series of captivating photographs.

Madeline Baird is a PhD student in Anthropology at UConn. Prior to enrolling at UConn, Madeline earned an MSc from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and worked for a decade supporting public health program design and community-based research. Her current research employs ethnographic methods to explore constructions of health inequity, human rights, and healing in Latin America.

January 11, 2023
8:30 AM - 4:00 PM
In Person - UConn Storrs

Register Now

Lilly Coleman, Manchester High School
Kevin Maysonet, Manchester High School
Quinn Hope, E.O. Smith High School
Lysa-Raye Mccaw, Bloomfield High School
Skylar Mattice, Brookfield High School
Mac Rodriguez, Brookfield High School
Shirin Unvala-Brien McMahon, Center for Global Studies High School

Chris Buckley, Brookfield High School
Sian Charles-Harris, UCONN Neag School of Education 
Jake Skrzypiec, Manchester High School

Wednesday, November 30, 2022
4:00 pm - 5:15 pm
The Dodd Center for Human Rights - Room 162
In Person & Online

This talk will draw on a companion article to Christine Sylvester's recent book Curating and Re-Curating the American War in Vietnam and Iraq (Oxford, 2019). Published in the International Relations journal Security Dialogue, “Curating and Re-Curating the American War in Vietnam” (2018) explores the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington as a "museum" site where "ordinary curators" authorize themselves to re-curate the war to put mortality --not state, honor or soldier heroism –at the heart of it. The piece mixes elements of new museum thinking with consideration of object assemblages composed and left at the Memorial, as well as the personal memories Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk curates into a museum to lost love in his novel The Museum of Innocence (2008). It challenges a field known for abstract theory to humanize its knowledge base by noticing ordinary civilians re-curating inherited versions of war.

Christine Sylvester is sole author of 7 books on International Relations, among them Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It (Routledge), Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey (Cambridge) and Producing Women and Progress in Zimbabwe (Heinemann). She has held the Swedish Research Council’s Kerstin Hesselgren Professorship, a Leverhulme fellowship at SOAS University of London, and was an Eminent Scholar of the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section of the International Studies Association. She was named one of Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations (Griffiths, Roach, Solomon), and today’s article was among 20 pieces recognized for pushing academic boundaries of security thinking over the 50-year history of Security Dialogue (M. Murphy, 2020).

Thursday, December 8, 2022
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Konover Auditorium
The Dodd Center for Human Rights 

In a time of unprecedented partisanship and political divisiveness, what role do we all as individuals play in fostering/cultivating a robust democracy with respect for human rights? Join us to consider these and other questions about the central role of civic engagement in the United States today. 

Opening remarks will be delivered by former Senator Chris Dodd. Special guest Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut will be joining us from Washington. Professor and President Emeritus Susan Herbst will serve as moderator.

This discussion is made possible by Travelers.

Wednesday, February 1, 2023
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
In Person and Online
Heritage Room - Homer Babbidge Library

Clean energy has become one of the key strategies to mitigate and reduce the effects of climate change, reduce oil dependency, improve the quality of our environment, and reduce household expenses on energy. However, the benefits from energy production and distribution have not been equally experienced by all communities. And the negative social and environmental consequences have not been equally shouldered. The clean energy transition may be an opportunity to redress some of those inequalities.

Please join us for an event aimed at fostering dialogue among community representatives, researchers, and policymakers interested in the equity implications of solar energy and electric mobility. Together, we’ll explore the sustainability and human rights challenges and opportunities that the clean energy revolution might bring to these sectors. We’ll focus, in particular, on the situation of historically underserved communities in Connecticut.

Faculty members from the University of Connecticut’s School of Engineering and Human Rights Institute will share their research and all participants will engage in active discussion. In-person and hybrid options for participation are available.

A collaborative venture between the Human Rights Institute and UConn’s School of Engineering, the Engineering for Human Rights initiative is focused on making human rights an integral component of effective engineering practice. We are teaching tomorrow's engineers risk management, climate resiliency, life-cycle analysis, and impact assessment. Our faculty specialize in research key to advancing human health, environmental sustainability, and industrial competitiveness. Together, we are focused on safeguarding people and nature, while advancing innovation.

Tuesday, November 1, 2022
12:30 pm - 1:45 pm
Virtual Event

The Business and Human Rights Workshop is dedicated to the development and discussion of works-in-progress and other non-published academic research. 

Multi-national corporations’ (MNCs) responsibility for human rights abuse within global supply chains, including forced labour, human trafficking and modern slavery is increasingly recognised in international standards including the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, United Nations Global Compact, and the Sustainable Development Goals. However, there is mounting evidence that voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) mechanisms—such as supplier codes of conduct, ethical certification, and social auditing—widely relied upon to uphold human rights in supply chains are failing. In light of these failures, governments and worker organizations are pioneering alternatives, including home state legislation—through which the home states of MNCs introduce top-down requirements for more meaningful changes in corporate behaviour— and new legally binding transnational supply chain agreements called worker-driven social responsibility (WSR) initiatives, which exert bottom-up pressure to change commercial practices. There is considerable optimism that these twin developments are creating a new wave of regulation to address forced labour and overlapping abuses in global supply chains. How can we best study the effectiveness of these mechanisms and their interactions?