Creating Justice: Human Rights and Art in Conversation

What can art offer to facilitate a fuller understanding of human rights and human rights violations? How do arts-based interventions help to highlight injustices, empower individuals and groups, and advocate for and effect change? How do art practices help to reveal new dimensions of violations and aid in post-conflict recovery?

In this edited volume, twenty-seven artists and scholars, working across a range of practices and approaches, answer these questions - and many more - through a series of conversations. They offer deeply personal reflections on creative labour, sharing original and rich insights into a range of ongoing social and political struggles, violent conflicts, and human rights abuses.

Eliza Garnsey is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in International Relations at the Institute for Global Prosperity, University College London. Her trans-disciplinary research focuses on art and visual culture in international relations and world politics, particularly in relation to human rights, transitional justice, and conflict. Eliza’s monograph, The Justice of Visual Art: Creative State-Building in Times of Political Transition, demonstrates that there are aesthetic and creative ways to pursue transitional justice. Her recent book, Justicecraft: Imagining Justice in Times of Conflict, is co-authored with Lauren Balasco, Arnaud Kurze and Christopher K. Lamont.

Caitlin Hamilton is a writer, researcher, and editor. Her research interests include the intersection of popular culture and world politics, creative methods, and feminist approaches to peace and security. Her recent publications include The Everyday Artefacts of World Politics (2022) and the third volume of Gender Matters in Global Politics (2023, co-edited with Laura J. Shepherd). She is also the founder of Hamilton Editorial which offers editing and mentoring services for academic writers.