The Body and Human Rights Symposium

CALL FOR PAPERS

Hosted by Brunel University London’s Global Lives Research Centre, Knowing Our Rights research project, and Britain in Europe think tank.

Convened by Dimitrios Giannoulopoulos and Meredith Jones

In recent decades the body has become a major area of research across many disciplines, especially in the arts and social sciences. Feminist scholars have made important interventions in the ways that bodies are represented, managed, regulated, treated medically, and modified. Simultaneously, human rights scholars have engaged with challenging questions of how the human body should be legally understood and defined, and what may legitimate the State to become involved with individual choices about what to do with one's body (or how individuals might protect their autonomy from state invasions). This symposium will draw together these two areas. We invite scholars from any discipline to submit abstracts for 15-minute papers that address the body and human rights. Topics may include (but are by no means limited to):

• Refugee Bodies and Borders
• Transgender Issues
• Abortion / Contraception 
• Body Modifications
• Healthcare / Surgery
• Euthanasia 
• Slavery
• Egg harvesting / sperm donation
• Incarceration
• Torture

Please send titles and brief abstracts for consideration to meredith.jones@brunel.ac.uk by Wednesday 10 January.