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Call for papers: Human Bodies and Human Rights

A symposium to be held at Friends House, 173-177 Euston Rd, Kings Cross, London NW1 2BJ on Monday 12 February, 2018

Hosted by Brunel University London’s Global Lives Research CentreKnowing 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.