The origins and development of human-rights education

A Comparative and International Education Research Network special event.

In this talk, Chair of International and Multicultural Education at the University of San Francisco, Professor Monisha Bajaj, discusses the origins and development of the field of human-rights education. Human-rights education has grown from a mention in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations to a current global field of scholarship, policy and practice. Professor Bajaj will share the history of the field’s rise as well as data from two of her projects examining human-rights education in India (2008-2010), and a more recent research project (2014-2017) with immigrant and refugee youth in the Northern California Bay area. Through collaborative and engaged scholarship, she will share how human-rights education has come to have meaning at different levels from UN corridors to classrooms serving some of the most marginalised youth across the globe.

Monisha Bajaj is Professor and Chair of International and Multicultural Education at the University of San Francisco. She is the editor and author of six books, including, most recently, Human Rights Education: Theory, Research, Praxis (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), as well as numerous articles. She also serves as founding editor of the International Journal of Human Rights Education. She has also developed curriculum for non-profit organisations and intergovernmental organisations, particularly related to peace education, human rights, antibullying efforts and sustainability. Her ‘client’ organisations have included UNICEF and UNESCO. In 2015, she received the Ella Baker/Septima Clark Human Rights Award (2015) from Division B of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Her previous and current research has been funded by the US Department of State’s Fulbright program, the Social Science Research Council, the National Academy of Education, the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and the Spencer Foundation. In 2017, she was a resident fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center which supported her work on a new book on transformative pedagogies and practices in schools.