School of Communication and Culture

This research group focuses on humanistic, cultural and historical aspects of human rights, the anchoring of human rights in social, cultural and political history and their staging within public media, political rhetoric and literary and aesthetic artefacts. The group consists of a approx. 30 researchers from Aarhus University from literary studies, drama, media studies, history, languagesection, rhetoric, philosophy, and dep. of law and dep. of political philosophy.
Focus areas:
- the relationship between natural law and human rights, the concept of nature in actual and historical discussions about human rights, the crossing of political, scientific, philosophical and cultural arguments for human rights
- the historical development of human rights, their status in Europe and in a global world, the use of 'human rights'-discourses in the building of national/regional political identity, special focus on France, Spain, England, Ireland, Africa and Latin America.
We focus on the early globalization period in the 16th century and era of revolutions, colonization and postcolonization, and on actual problems of coming to terms with history: the legal aftermaths of the Spanish Civil War, holocaust etc.
- rhetorical, mediated and aesthetic stagings of human rights in public media and aesthetic artefacts. Effects of affectivity, fictionality and realism
- human rights in situations of conflict, war and terror. For instance, ex-Jugoslavia, AbuGhraib, 9/11, and Italy in the 1970s.