Public Lecture by Robin Kirk at OSA

The Department of Gender Studies, the Center for Teaching and Learning
 and the Open Society Archives present
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ROBIN KIRK
Co-Director, Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University
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Learning Collaboratively, Learning
Immersively: Lessons in Human Rights Pedagogy
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9th March, 2015 at 17.00
at OSA, Budapest, V. Arany J. utca 32.
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The complexities of human rights demand scholarly engagement. At the same time, the pedagogy
of human rights is crippled without active engagement with the quickly shifting landscape of human
rights thinking, strategy and practice. What are the challenges in bringing human rights to the
classroom and taking the class to contemporary human rights debates? How can teachers engage
students whose knowledge of and familiarity with human rights may widely diverge? This talk
explores human rights pedagogy from the perspective of a practitioner who has developed a range
of engaged or immersive learning experiences. The talk will explore a place-based approach using
the American South, Chile and Northern Ireland as a framework for study and engagement. The talk
will also include some best practices as well as suggestions for class exercises, readings and syllabi.

Robin Kirk is the author of More Terrible Than Death: Massacres, Drugs and America’s War in Colombia
(PublicAffairs) and The Monkey’s Paw: New Chronicles from Peru (University of Massachusetts
Press). She coedits the The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University) and is an editor
of Duke University Press’s World Readers series. Kirk authored, co-authored and edited over twelve
reports for Human Rights Watch as a senior researcher, all available on-line. Currently, Kirk is a
Faculty Co-Chair of the Duke Human Rights Center@the Franklin Humanities Institute and is a founding
member of the Pauli Murray Project, an initiative of the center that seeks to use the legacy of
this Durham daughter to examine the region’s past of slavery, segregation and continuing economic
inequality. Kirk directs the Belfast program for DukeEngage, in partnership with cross-community
groups dealing with the legacy of past conflict and human rights. She is a lecturer in Duke's Department
of Cultural Anthropology.
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Introduced by: István Rév, Director of OSA Archivum
Chair: Andrea Pető Professor, Department of Gender Studies
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