Human Rights
(MA) Human Rights
Entry for 2025
FHEQ level
This course is set at Level 7 (Masters) in the national Framework for Higher Education Qualifications.
Course Aims
This interdisciplinary programme provides you with an understanding of recent debates in the field of human rights from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, law, international relations and politics. You will examine how human rights are embedded in wider social processes of state regulation; conflict and mass displacement; transnational social movements; and international agencies. You will develop an ability to critically assess human rights instruments (international and regional), discourses and institutions and assess the relationship between international human rights law; state law and local moralities. By the end of the programme you should able to research human rights issues in a way that contextualises state and transnational legal procedures in wider social processes such as gender, class, ethnicity and globalisation. The programme is aimed at those already involved in or contemplating professional advocacy with human rights agencies and for those interested in pursuing further postgraduate research in this field.
Course learning outcomes
Describe and compare philosophical positions within the historical evolution and contemporary form of human rights
Summarize key debates in the field (including cultural relativism, indigenous rights, multiculturalism)
Compare and appraise diverse disciplinary perspectives on human rights (law; anthropology; international relations; human geography)
Identify and assess the contemporary international human rights regime (United Nations; regional institutions; national bodies; international and local advocates)
Apply human rights to broader concerns (migration; health; humanitarianism; post-conflict reconstruction)
Refined ability to identify and access appropriate primary and secondary research resources
Ability to collate and critically analyse those resources in relation to complex issues in the field
Ability to present concise and cogently structured arguments, both orally and in writing
Ability to work together with others as well as independently, including effective time management
Ability to deploy a range of communication and information technology skills
Full-time course composition
Part-time course composition
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The University reserves the right to make changes to the contents or methods of delivery of, or to discontinue, merge or combine modules, if such action is reasonably considered necessary by the University. If there are not sufficient student numbers to make a module viable, the University reserves the right to cancel such a module. If the University withdraws or discontinues a module, it will use its reasonable endeavours to provide a suitable alternative module.