How can we decolonise the political theory of human rights? Can an examination of the conceptual vocabularies of subaltern rights struggles open up for new possibilities and futures for human rights?

Sumi Madhok, professor in Political Theory and Gender Studies from London School of Economics and Political Science, guests Lund for a discussion on her new book Vernacular Rights Cultures: The Politics of Origins, Human Rights and Gendered Struggles for Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Through ethnographic engagement with subaltern rights struggles in India and Pakistan, Madhok goes beyond critiquing the Eurocentrism of human rights as she documents political imaginaries, critical conceptual vocabularies and gendered political struggles for rights and justice that animate subaltern mobilisations in “most of the world.” 

Discussants: 
-Miia Halme-Tuomisaari, Associate Professor in Human Rights Studies, Lund University. Halme-Tuomisaari has worked extensively with the concept and history of human rights from a legal anthropological perspective. 

- Helle Rydström, Professor in Gender Studies, Lund University. Rydström specialises in the anthropology of gender in Asia, and has done fieldwork in India and Nepal.

Moderator: 

- Therese Boje Mortensen, PhD Candidate in Human Rights Studies and Coordinator at SASNET.

Jointly organised by the Swedish South Asian Studies Network (SASNET) and Human Rights Studies, Lund University.