Line up for 20th Oxford Human Rights Festival announced

The Festival’s primary aim is to raise awareness of human rights issues through the arts, including film, performance, talks, workshops and exhibitions. 

Founded in 2003, the Festival was initiated by postgraduates and staff at the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP), part of the School of Architecture at Oxford Brookes University.

This year’s festival has the theme of ‘Movement’, and will include a 5km walk to stand in solidarity with the millions of people who walk over 5km a day to access clean water, and a seminar looking at ‘The Vanamere Tribe: Our Right to Roam’; the story of a community of 16 families in Goa who are at a crossroads of a traditional nomadic existence and permanence. Other seminars include movement in the context of climate change and disasters.

The annual Nabeel Hamdi Lecture will launch this year’s Festival. Special guest Yasmeen Lari, the first female architect in Pakistan, Oxford Brookes alumna and recipient of many national and international awards, will deliver a thought-provoking lecture entitled ‘Rights-Based Development for Climate Migrants through Barefoot Social Architecture’.

Other highlights will include a talk by Professor Ruben Andersson, Professor of Anthropology and Migration at the University of Oxford, on ‘Rethinking the border in times of crisis’. The talk will be held at Oxford Brookes’ Headington campus.

Speaking about the 2022 event, Festival coordinator and Associate Researcher at CENDEP, Elizabeth Laskar said: “Coming out of the pandemic we are delighted to offer the public a mixture of on-line and in-person events to mark our landmark 20th anniversary’  

The festival events are led by CENDEP students in collaboration with staff and students across the university. Organised events include a Virtual Reality experience  that follows the stories of LGBTQ refugees to a pop-up art and poetry performance from  a women’s group from Oxford and a screening of critically adored film ‘Limbo’, and two exhibitions at Brookes and two in the city .

A number of events are also being run in collaboration with  Oxford Brookes University’s Migration and Refugees Research Network and Wolfson College

To book your place for Professor Ruben Andersson’s guest lecture, please visit: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/rethinking-the-border-in-times-of-crisis-tickets-272551648317

Full details of the Festival programme can be found at https://www.oxfordhumanrightsfestival.net/