Collaborative,
multidisciplinary,
creative,
impact driven.
Our research projects are the result of collaborations between teams of researchers, based at the University of York and around the world. Many of our collaborators are engaged in practice, as lawyers and activists. The joys and struggles of collaboration are a large part of the story of every research project.
We draw upon the theories and methods of a range of disciplines, including most frequently law, political studies and creative practice.
Our research process is a creative process and we regularly draw upon methods from creative practice, often involving artists and writers directly as part of our research teams. and bringing creative processes into our research methods.
The goal of our research is change. Our research seeks to support practitioners in their efforts to provide services to and advocate on behalf of themselves and survivors of human rights violations. We seek to push back against the shrinking of civic space globally, including in many of the countries in which we work.
Our core research team
Martin Jones
Martin practiced as a refugee lawyer in Canada before joining academia. He has been involved with refugee legal aid organisations, including by co-founding the Egyptian Foundation for Refugee Rights. He has worked with refugee legal aid providers across the MENA and Asia Pacific regions, including by serving as the founding chair of the Legal Aid and Advocacy Working Group of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network. He has more recently worked with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders on research about and advocacy on the effect of closing civic space on activists, including defenders of people on the move.
Alice Nah
Alice was trained as an organisational psychologist before becoming an activist on a range of human rights and refugee issues. She has been involved in the organisation of civil society in Asia and co-founded both national and regional networks of civil society organisations working with refugees, including the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network. In 2009, she was she was honored as a TIP Report Hero Acting to End Modern Slavery by the US Department of State in recognition of her efforts to combat human trafficking. She has maintained a leadership role within civil society networks and has been active globally on refugee issues. She currently serves as the chair of the Board of Directors of the International Detention Coalition. She is also active on the security of human rights defenders at risk.
Juliana Mensah
Julaina has written for theatre with a focus on human rights narratives and the testimonies of survivors and she was Leverhulme Artist in Residence at the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York. Juliana has many years of experience of developing, managing and delivering cross art-form creative projects for community development and social action and has worked with a number of human rights and civil society organisations. Castles from Cobwebs, Juliana’s first novel, won the NorthBound Book Award in 2019.
But we’re more than just these people …
We are joined in each of our research projects by expert advisors, practitioners, our participants, and additional researchers. Our research collaborators can be found around the world and include human rights defenders, lawyers, refugees, and displaced communities. Information about everyone involved in each project can be found on the relevant project page.
Our home
“The Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR) at the University of York is an interdisciplinary research and teaching centre. It is a friendly community of scholars and visiting practitioners who have a shared focus on the real world challenges of putting human rights into practice and protecting human rights defenders at risk. A focus on human rights defending and defenders shapes all the Centre’s work.”