Welcome
Dedicated to interdisciplinary and critical dialogue on human rights, the Rapoport Center’s Working Paper Series (WPS) publishes innovative papers by established and early-career researchers as well as practitioners. The goal is to provide a productive environment for debate about human rights among academics, policymakers, activists, practitioners, and the public.
Authors from all disciplines and institutions are welcome to submit papers. We publish papers on a variety of human rights and social justice topics, and we particularly welcome papers focusing on issues and topics affecting the Global South. We are especially interested in the following: reproductive justice and sexual rights; environmental justice and climate justice; peace and nuclear disarmament; inequality; and the future of work.
Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis and evaluated by the WPS interdisciplinary editorial committee, which includes graduate and professional students from across the University of Texas. The WPS committee provides comments and feedback to authors before the paper is published online. Publication in the WPS does not preclude future publication elsewhere; in fact, many of our working papers have since been published in academic journals and edited volumes.
Each year, the WPS publishes the winning paper from the Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights and the Zipporah B. Wiseman Prize for Scholarship on Law, Literature, and Justice.
Our Latest Posts:
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Between Intra-Group Vulnerability and Inter-Group Vulnerability: Bridging the Gaps in the Theoretical Scholarship on Internal Minorities
This post is one of our Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship in Gender and Human Rights, Working Papers .by Miriam Zucker View/download paper Winner, Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights (2021) Abstract: The scholarship on internal minorities has generated different proposals for addressing concerns about the oppressive impacts of minority cultures’ practices on their more vulnerable members. Critical reflection on this scholarship reveals that it is characterized by a rigid binary choice between
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An Ethos of Restitution: Walter Schwarz and the Gloss
This post is one of our Working Papers, Zipporah B. Wiseman Prize for Scholarship on Law, Literature and Justice .by Laura Petersen View/download paper Winner, Zipporah B. Wiseman Prize for Scholarship on Law, Literature, and Justice (2021) Click here to watch a recording of Petersen’s presentation. Abstract: Berlin, 1950s. Newly arrived back in Germany after escaping from the NS regime, a Jewish lawyer called Dr Walter Schwarz settles in Berlin. He opens a law practice assisting
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Colonized Masculinities and Feminicide in the United States: How Conditions of Coloniality Socialize Feminicidal Men
This post is one of our Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship in Gender and Human Rights, Working Papers .By Shireen Jalali-Yazdi View/download paper Winner, Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights (2019) Abstract: This paper argues that the colonial conditions faced by African American men contribute to the construction of feminicidal masculinities. Feminicide—the killing of women because they are women—has received increased international focus but has largely eluded political, academic, and public
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The Only Panthers Left: An Intellectual History of the Angola 3
by Holly Genovese View/download paper Abstract Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace, and Robert Hillary King, colloquially known as the Angola 3, spent most of their adult lives in solitary confinement, Wallace and Woodfox for the murder of Louisiana State Penitentiary Prison Guard Brent Miller, and King for a separate false murder accusation. They were Black Panther Party
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Now is (not yet) the Winter of Our Discontent: The Unfulfilled Promise of Economic and Social Rights in the Fight Against Economic Inequality
By Caroline Omari Lichuma View/download paper Abstract Material inequality or (extreme) economic inequality has been touted as one of the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century. Wealth is “hemorrhaging upwards” rather than “trickling down.” In a world where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the inequality gap in income and wealth continues intensifying
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Fostering the Inclusion of Disabled Students in Higher Education in South Africa: Some Reflections
by Serges Djoyou Kamga View/download paper Abstract Higher education is an important step towards ensuring human development. This was understood by South Africans who included the right to education, and to further education, in their Constitution. Subsequently, the country has adopted various policies to ensure access to higher education for students with disabilities, and this was in line
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Domesticating Human Rights on African Soil: Theorizing from Practice
by Dr. Abena Ampofoa Asare View/download paper Abstract In the 70th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), this paper proposes an alternative perspective on the progress of the international human rights regime inaugurated in 1948. Focusing on the multiple ways that international human rights discourse is deployed in diverse African locales throughout
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“United We Stand” The Collective Mobilisation of African Women in Athens, Greece
by Viki Zaphiriou-Zarifi View/download paper Abstract This paper explores how African women in Athens are collectively mobilising to resist and manage the exclusionary and othering processes they all-too-often face in their everyday lives. In particular, it focuses on the activism of the United African Women’s Organization (UAWO) and its mobilisation of the ‘African woman’ identity in
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Striving for Solutions: African States, Refugees, and the International Politics of Durable Solutions
by Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso View/download paper Abstract How do international structure and African agency constrain or propel the search for truly “durable solutions” to the African refugee situation? This is the central question that I seek to answer in this paper. I would argue that existing approaches to resolving refugee issues in Africa are problematic, and key to
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Re Georgio: An Intimate Account of Transgender Interactions with Law and Society
This post is one of our Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship in Gender and Human Rights, Working Papers .By Katherine Fallah View/download paper Winner, Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights (2018) Abstract: In its everyday operation, the law presumes to narrate trans stories and shape trans lives. This piece shines a light on law’s claims to authority over transgender identities and transgender bodies, and offers an alternate, intimate account of one
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