Human Rights Conference. Frontiers of Human Rights Research: Methodological Innovations and New Rights Issues

April 2, 2018
9:00 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
1010 Weiser Hall
500 Church Street, Ann Arbor

9:00-9:15 am Opening Remarks:
Welcome by Kiyoteru Tsutsui
Introductory remarks by Changrok Soh

9:15-10:30 am Panel I: Big Data and Human Rights (Presider: Taehee Whang)
Jeong-Woo Koo
Evolution of Human Rights as Cultural System: Probabilistic Topic Modeling of 116,000 South Korean
Newspaper Articles, 1990-2015
Charles Crabtree
Blurring the Lines: Rethinking Self-Censorship under Autocracy
David Suarez
Community Foundations, Human Rights, and the Legitimation of Advocacy
Discussant: Benjamin Appel (Michigan State University, Political Science)

10:45 am-12:00 pm Panel II: Collecting Human Rights Data (Presider: Youngsoo Yu)
Geoffrey Wallace
Violence, Non-violence, the Effects of International Human Rights Law
Chad Clay
Experts and State Obligations: Introducing the Human Rights Measurement Initiative
Hollie Brehm
Examining Transitional Justice Outcomes in Rwanda
Discussant: James Morrow (University of Michigan, Political Science)

1:00-2:15 pm Panel III: Human Rights and Family (Presider: Minzee Kim)
Amanda Murdie
Freedom from Childhood Marriage
Paul Chang
Claiming Rights: Narrating Belonging by Marriage Migrants in South Korea
Brian Gran
Cross-National Comparison of Abortion Policies Using fs-QCA
Discussant: Susan Waltz (University of Michigan, Ford School of Public Policy)

2:30-3:45 pm Panel IV: New Challenges in Human Rights (Presider: Jinwon Chung)
Hun Joon Kim
Measuring the Impact of Truth Commissions: A Lesson from the South Korean Cases
Alyssa Prorok
Understanding the Determinants of ICC Involvement: Legal Mandate, Power Politics, and the Quest
for Legitimacy
Daniel Connolly
New Rules for New Tools?: The Lawfare of Drones
Discussant: Kristina Daugirdas (University of Michigan, Law School)

4-5:30 pm Keynote Lecture (Moderator: Kiyoteru Tsutsui)
Beth Simmons The Future of Human Rights: Social Science Research and Reality on the Ground

5:30 Closing by Jeong-Woo Koo

This interdisciplinary conference convenes leading scholars of human rights engaged in cutting-edge research in terms of the methodologies they adopt and/or the topics they focus on. The last couple of decades has established human rights research as a new vibrant field in which scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds brought their insights to advance our understanding of human rights. We take stock of those developments and explore applications of new methodological approaches and examination of new human rights issues with a view to opening new horizons of human rights research.

The conference is free and open to the public.

Organized by the Donia Human Rights Center, University of Michigan and SSK (Social Science Korea) Human Rights Forum, Sungkyunkwan University; Co-sponsored by the Nam Center for Korean Studies, University of Michigan.