Conference Announcement and Call for Papers: 2025 IAHRE Conference Human Rights Education and Youth Empowerment
International Association for Human Rights Education
Conference Announcement and Call for Papers
Human Rights Education and Youth Empowerment
Thursday 12 June from 12.30pm and Friday 13 June 2025 9.30 – 16.00
Venue: IOE UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society
20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK
Background
The International Association for Human Rights Education (IAHRE) was established in 2023 at the 15th International Conference for Education and Democratic Citizenship (ICEDC). IAHRE’s goal is to support the development of human rights education research, scholarship and practice. IAHRE’s scholarly journal is the award-winning Human Rights Education Review* founded in 2018 and published by Taylor and Francis from January 2025.
The IAHRE Conference a meeting place for scholars, researchers, graduate students, education policymakers, and civil society activists from across Europe and internationally. It builds on the work of the WERA International Research Network on Human Rights Education, coordinated by Professors Audrey Osler and Hugh Starkey. It provides a unique opportunity to present and discuss current research and policy relating to human rights education and questions of human rights within education. There is an expectation that presenters will submit their final revised conference papers to Human Rights Education Review.
Call for papers
We invite papers for the 2025 IAHRE Conference Human Rights Education and Youth Empowerment. IAHRE 2025 is an interdisciplinary conference, and we welcome scholars from sociology, education, law, history, politics, geography and other relevant disciplines. Papers should review and critically reflect on human rights education policy and practice, child rights education and the wider area of education and human rights. NGO colleagues who have case studies of campaigns are likewise invited. We welcome contributions from researchers at all stages of their careers.
We are conscious that children and young adults frequently struggle to make their voices heard and children face barriers to democratic participation since they are excluded from formal political mechanisms and decision-making processes. For this reason, we particularly welcome papers addressing intergenerational injustice. Our world is increasingly unstable, with growing authoritarianism and challenges to human rights and democratic values in all regions. Climate change, disinformation, terrorism, conflict, hate speech and xenophobia confront us in the starkest terms. Human rights education (HRE) has a vital role in maintaining hope and enabling people of all ages to reimagine a positive future. HRE is supported by UN Sustainable Development Goal 4.
Any vision of a sustainable future necessarily includes ‘sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development’ (SDG 4.7). IAHRE 2025 invites papers on these themes and includes but is not limited to papers addressing:
- Human rights curricula
- Global citizenship education
- Intergenerational justice
- Migration, citizenship and rights
- Children’s digital worlds
- Human rights, intercultural and language learning
- Worldviews and religion
- Decolonising learning
- Legal perspectives
- Teacher education and human rights
Abstracts of no more than 300 words including paper title, your name, institutional affiliation and contact email should be sent, no later than Monday 13 January 2025 to: Professor Hugh Starkey h.starkey@ucl.ac.uk. All abstracts will be peer reviewed by members of the IAHRE Conference Steering Group. Please indicate whether you would prefer to give an oral or a poster presentation. Applicants will be informed of the outcome of the review by the end of January 2025.
A full draft of accepted papers should be submitted by 28 April 2025. Your revised paper should be submitted to Human Rights Education Review by 4 August 2025. Registration will open in January 2025.
Conference organisers:
Corresponding director for academic questions: Hugh Starkey, Emeritus Professor Citizenship and Human Rights Education, UCL, UK h.starkey@ucl.ac.uk
Professor Audrey Osler Editor-in-Chief Human Rights Education Review.
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