Human Rights Research Methods

University of Copenhagen

Dates: 26-28 November 2025

The course runs over three days, with a programme that consists in a mix between expert lectures, PhD presentations, individual feed-back, and group discussions. Five human rights experts will give presentations on different methodological issues in contemporary human rights research, including legal methodologies; quantitative methods; sociological and anthropological approaches; policy and research; and interdisciplinarity. PhD participants will present methodological and methodical aspects of their PhD projects and will receive detailed feed-back from one expert. Other experts and peer participants will provide additional comments and feed-back to the individual presentations.

Academic Aim
The purpose of this course is to introduce and discuss different methodical and methodological approaches to human rights research. Human rights research is a complex field, including several different disciplines within law, social sciences, and humanities. The research field has been expanding over the past decades and is today characterized by a high level of multi- and interdisciplinarity. The course aims to 1) provide participants with an overview of key methodological and methodical developments within the field of contemporary human rights research; 2) discuss each participant’s methodological and methodical choices; and 3) provide the participants with support and guidelines for good research practices in this field.

Target group
The course is open to PhD students from law, social sciences, and humanities who are working on human rights related topics. The course can accommodate approx. 15 participants. If we receive more than 15 applications, we will select participants based on 1) the quality of their paper abstract; 2) the topic of their human rights research; and 3) their discipline, aiming for a high-quality, multi-disciplinary group of participants.

Course lecturers

Megan Donald, post-doctoral at the Danish Institute for Human Rights

Steffen Jensen, Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights TBC

Astrid Kjeldgaard-Pedersen, Professor of International Law at iCourts – Centre of Excellence for International Courts, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen.

Sune Klinge is Associate Professor in Constitutional Law at Centre for European and Comparative Legal studies (CECS), Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen.  

Urška Šadl is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen and Professor at the European University Institute, Florence

Mikael Rask Madsen, Professor of International Law at iCourts – Centre of Excellence for International Courts, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen

Course organizers: Mikael Rask Madsen, Professor of International Law at iCourts – Centre of Excellence for International Courts, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen and Marie Juul Pedersen, Senior Researcher (Danish Institute for Human Rights)

Programme: TBA.

Language: English

ECTS: 4.

Max. numbers of participants: 20.

Preparation
Participants are expected to read each other’s papers, amounting to approx. 300 pages in total (15-18 papers of approx. 8.000 words).
In addition, participants are expected to read the assigned literature for the six lectures, amounting to approx. 120 pages in total (six articles or book chapters of approx. 20 pages).

Registration: Please register via the link in the box no later than 15 September 2025.

Further information: For more information about the PhD course, please contact the PhD Administration (phd@hrsc.ku.dk).

Literature: TBA.

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