Methods of Human Rights Research

Description

In academic human rights research, especially legal human rights research, little attention tends to be devoted to questions of methodology. One reason for this may be that human rights scholars often are former human rights activists. Dispensing with methodological niceties enables them to engage in wishful thinking and to come up with the conclusions they were hoping to find in the first place. Furthermore, although much emphasis continues to be put on the need to carry out human rights research from a multidisciplinary perspective, the methods to be applied in such research remain far from clear.brWhich criteria can be identified to qualify a piece of human rights research as a methodologically sound piece of work Are there aspects and considerations that are typical for human rights research What are good practices in human rights research The book addresses these questions from the perspective of different scholarly fields relevant for human rights research law including international law and criminal law; social sciences including criminology, political science, comparative politics, international relations and anthropology; and philosophy and history the humanities.brThis book is essential reading for any PhD candidate embarking on a dissertation in the field of human rights and any human rights scholar wishing to critically reflect on the quality of herhis own methods of work. brbrFons Coomans holds the UNESCO Chair in Human Rights and Peace at the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University and is Coordinator of the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights.brFred Grnfeld is Extraordinary Professor in the Causes of Gross Human Rights Violations at the Centre for Conflict Studies at the Faculty of Humanities of Utrecht University and Associate Professor of International Relations and the Law of International Organisations at the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University and at the University College Maastricht.brMenno T. Kamminga is Professor of International Law at Maastricht University and Director of the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights.br