The University of Dayton is pleased to host an upcoming academic conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights: Charting the Frontiers of Research and Advocacy, to take place in Dayton, OH, October 3-5, 2013. This conference is envisioned as an opportunity to foster scholar-practitioner collaboration, interdisciplinary dialogue, and cultivate critical introspection of human rights advocacy. The keynote address will be delivered by Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and formerly of Human Rights Watch and the International Center for Transitional Justice.

It has now been fifteen years since the research program in Transnational Advocacy Networks began to shape a generation of scholars and scholarship. As the literature in this area grows richer and more robust, the academy is at an auspicious moment to convene around this theme and examine the social practice of human rights: to expose human rights to a degree of self-reflection appropriate to its resources, reach, and prominence. The “social practice of human rights” focuses attention on advocacy and NGOs by exploring the expressions of human rights in the context of those actors tasked with translating abstract moral values into concrete matter.