Research methods in fundamental rights

This opening session will be led by Professor Başak Çalı and Professor Cathryn Costello.

Başak Çalı is Professor of International Law at the Hertie School and Director of the School's Centre for Fundamental Rights. She is an expert in European and international human rights law, with a special interest in comparative human rights law. She has written extensively on the purpose, interpretation, legitimacy, standards of review and domestic impact of human rights law. Her work places human rights law in its broader normative and political context and has a dual interest in legal interpretation and law in action.

Cathryn Costello is Professor of Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School and Co-Director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights. She is an expert in European and international refugee and migration law and has written about EU asylum and migration law, international refugee law, and the relationship between migration and labour law. Cathryn is currently the Principal Investigator of RefMig, a five-year ERC-funded research project exploring refugee mobility, recognition and rights. She has also done studies for UNHCR, the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. She holds a DPhil in Law from the University of Oxford.

This workshop will be led jointly by Professor Başak Çalı and Professor Cathryn Costello.

Başak Çalı is Professor of International Law at the Hertie School and Director of the School's Centre for Fundamental Rights. She is an expert in European and international human rights law, with a special interest in comparative human rights law. She has written extensively on the purpose, interpretation, legitimacy, standards of review and domestic impact of human rights law. Her work places human rights law in its broader normative and political context and has a dual interest in legal interpretation and law in action.

Cathryn Costello is Professor of Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School and Co-Director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights. She is an expert in European and international refugee and migration law and has written about EU asylum and migration law, international refugee law, and the relationship between migration and labour law. Cathryn is currently the Principal Investigator of RefMig, a five-year ERC-funded research project exploring refugee mobility, recognition and rights. She has also done studies for UNHCR, the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. She holds a DPhil in Law from the University of Oxford.

This workshop on critical feminist methods will be led by Petra Sußner, Co-Investigator and postdoctoral researcher, Research Unit 2265 Law-Gender-Collectivity funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG, hosted at the Humboldt University Berlin.

The workshop on interviews in socio-legal human rights research will be led by Professor Başak Çalı and Professor Alice Donald.

Başak Çalı is Professor of International Law at the Hertie School and Director of the School's Centre for Fundamental Rights. She is an expert in European and international human rights law, with a special interest in comparative human rights law. She has written extensively on the purpose, interpretation, legitimacy, standards of review and domestic impact of human rights law. Her work places human rights law in its broader normative and political context and has a dual interest in legal interpretation and law in action.

Alice Donald is Associate Professor of Human Rights Law in the Department of Law and Politics, and Director of Learning, Teaching and Quality and co-Chair of Ethics for the School of Law. She previously worked as a commissioner, editor and broadcast journalist with the BBC World Service (1991-2005).  

This workshop on dissection as a method will be led by Marie-Bénédicte Dembour, Professor of Law and Anthropology at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University. Dembour was previously at the University of Sussex and the University of Brighton. She studied Law as an undergraduate at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and gained her MPhil and DPhil in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Her numerous publications include Who Believes in Human Rights? (Cambridge University Press, 2006), ‘What are Human Rights? Four Schools of Thought (Human Rights Quarterly, 2010), and When Humans Become Migrants (Oxford University Press, 2015). She currently leads the ERC research project ‘DISSECT: Evidence in International Human Rights Adjudication’.

This workshop on process-tracing will be led by Mark Dawson, Professor of European Law and Governance at the Hertie School. Dawson's research focuses on the relationship between law and policymaking in the EU, particularly economic governance and human rights protection. He is the Principal Investigator of LEVIATHAN, a research project exploring the legal and political accountability structure of EU economic governance. LEVIATHAN is supported by a Starting Grant of the European Research Council.

The workshop on coding and content analysis in human rights research will be led by Ezgi Yıldız (Global Governance Center, the Graduate Institute, Geneva). Ezgi is the Principal Investigator for Testing the Focal Point Theory of International Adjudication, and Postdoctoral Researcher for Paths of International Law. She holds a PhD in International Relations with a Minor in International Law (summa cum laude with distinction) from the Graduate Institute. Ezgi’s research focuses on the politics of international law, international courts, and legal change. Her book, Between Forbearance and Audacity: How the European Court Redefined the Norm Against Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press

This workshop on legal interpretivism and normative methodology will be led by Alain Zysset, a Lecturer in Public Law at the School of Law, University of Glasgow. From 2019 - 2020 Zysset was a visiting fellow at the Hertie School's Centre for Fundamental rights. His research lies at the intersection of public law, international law and political theory and his main area of research is the theory and practice of the ECHR. Zysset is the author of The ECHR and Human Rights Theory (Routledge, 2016).

This workshop on archival research methods and TWAIL methodology will be led by Mohammad (Shahab) Shahabuddin, Professor of International Law and Human Rights at Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham, UK. Shahabuddin is especially interested in the history and theory of international law, ethnicity and nationalism, and the concept of statehood. His teaching and research is informed by critical, postcolonial, and TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) scholarship. He is the author of Ethnicity and International Law: Histories, Politics and Practices (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Minorities and the Making of Postcolonial States in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2021). He held a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship during 2018-2020.