Lucie White’s visit to the ANU creates an opportunity to reflect on the following questions, of relevance to early career researchers and doctoral students across many fields:

• How do human rights activists, development practitioners, lawyers, and others differ in their deployment of human rights?
• Is sub-Saharan Africa a special case for human rights?
• Are international human rights instruments of lesser import for those living in extreme or radical poverty?
• What is a “rights-based” approach to development? Are the Millenium Development Goals and corporate social responsibility standards feasible pathways to human rights?
• What is the role of litigation in social change?
• How do scholars employ different theoretical vantage points, such as distributive legal analysis and historical institutionalism, in a single study?

The aim of this half-day workshop is for ANU early career researchers and doctoral students to engage in a reflective dialogue about their own research projects. Lucie will provide comments on individual presentations, and lead a final discussion. Participation is open to early career researchers and doctoral students in the Colleges of Law, Asia and the Pacific, Arts and Social Sciences, Medicine, Biology and Environment. Applicants should submit a short abstract of their proposed presentation (300 words) and a short statement as to how they would benefit from this workshop (300 words).

Please send these by 12 April 2012 to COAST@law.anu.edu.au

The circulation of papers is encouraged, but not required, and those participating will be invited to present their work over 15 minutes.

For catering purposes, please also RSVP to COAST@law.anu.edu.au by 12 April 2012.

Lucie White is the Louis A. Horvitz Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. After working for two decades on critical lawyering and client voice in the context of US poverty, she turned to the issue of extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, for a decade she has worked with Ghanaian partners on an interdisciplinary Right to Health project that challenges the ways that Ghana’s health finance system contributes to economic and social inequality. She has been a Fulbright Senior Africa Scholar, a Carnegie Scholar on Teaching and Learning, a scholar in residence at the Harvard Divinity School, and a Bunting Scholar at Radcliffe College. In 2006, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, she initiated “Stones of Hope,” a collaboration among African human rights activists and distinguished human rights scholars to examine African innovations in Economic and Social Rights advocacy.

Lucie's visit is supported by the ANU Gender Institute and the ANU College of Law