Conferences

Our signature events are our week-long conferences in Oxford, England in Spring and Summer each year. The Consortium also hosts a variety of other seminars in different locations and different focuses--all chosen for their relevance to current events and the human rights fields. 

 

Upcoming Conferences

  • Sonoma State University, California, USA

    Leadership for Human Rights Organizing:
Now more than ever, our communities need leaders ready to stand up for justice and create lasting change. This Oxford Consortium for Human Rights conference will inspire you to step into leadership roles while equipping you with practical tools for effective community organizing. Together, we’ll explore strategies for building coalitions, amplifying marginalized voices, and driving action on today’s most urgent human rights issues. Come ready to be challenged, supported, and empowered to turn vision into impact.

  • Brasenose College, Oxford University, Oxford, UK

    This conference examines two of humanity's greatest existential risks and explores how war and climate emergency impact people's human rights. Students will learn about the nature of war today and the legal framework that aims to limit itseff ects by protecting civilians, combatants, detainees and the environment. The conference will also examine the science of climate change and its impact on humanity and nature from intensifying weather hazards and the risk of tipping points in the earth system. It will then assess the progress being made in the two COPs of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UN Convention on Biodiversity, and in the emerging consensus around climate justice and the human right to "a clean, healthy and sustainable environment". Important connections between climate change and conflict will also be made. The protection of Nature and the emerging idea of the "rights of Nature" will be explored in analysis of both war and climate.

  • Magdalen College, Oxford University, Oxford, UK

    This conference will explore the relationship between many new technologies emerging across human society and people's continuous demands for human rights. The course will examine how the impact of new technology is sometimes positive and enabling of human rights, sometimes negative and restrictive, and often ambivalent and uncertain. Students will study particular technological revolutions in communications, medicine, governance, surveillance, education, weapons, energy, and manufacturing to explore their implications for traditional human rights to health, privacy, free speech, free association, and the laws of war. More profoundly, the conference will explore how new technology is changing our experience of being human - ontology itself - as we live an increasingly hybrid life as computerized humanity.

  • Magdalen College, Oxford University, Oxford, UK

    This new conference explores the right to health. It examines patterns of health and disease worldwide, and assesses the progress of the global movement for universal healthcare. Particular sessions address the major health challenges of infectious disease, epidemics, antibiotic resistance, childbirth, hunger, obesity, chronic diseases, and war. The conference also focuses on the health challenges of climate change and zoonotic disease, and new policies of One Health and Planetary Health. The theory and practice of health activism will be a constant theme of the course, which will draw on the expertise and experience of University of Oxford’s world- leading professors and researchers in global health.

What our participants say

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"Not only did this workshop give me hope, but also meaningful takeaways that I am sure will help me in executing community action. Listening to the stories of others, I now realize that together as a community we are unstoppable.”

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Marissa Roy, USC

“I gained a much clearer idea of what humanitarian work looks like in the field and what challenges humanitarian workers face. I hope that, as a law student with political aspirations, this perspective will help me craft policies that keep in mind the realities of the field."

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Fizza Raza, University of Houston

"The Oxford fellowship program was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I have always wanted to go into human rights, but it is sometimes very hard to maintain hope that change is possible. The program showed me that many people are working for goals that are similar to mine. The fact that they're all from different backgrounds provides great insights into global issues. I'm confident that together we will be able to actually make this world a better place."