Human Rights Lab

The Human Rights Lab actively engages University of Chicago students and community members in solutions to human rights problems, advancing new questions around human rights theory and practice through the lens of deep research, experiential learning, and critical community building. In its first three years, under the leadership of Director of Human Rights Practice Alice Kim, the Lab is addressing the intersecting human rights crises of racialized policing and mass incarceration in the United States.

Check out upcoming Human Rights Lab events!

Human Rights in Practice

This lunchtime series invites human rights practitioners and community leaders working to end mass incarceration and police violence to share their work with students and the broader community.
 

Human Rights Lab Courses

The Human Rights Lab offers two seminar courses each academic year to UChicago undergraduate students. The courses are designed to engage students in a deeper understanding of the complex social and political aspects of mass incarceration and racialized policing. 
 

Mass Incarceration Working Group

First convened in 2019, the Mass Incarceration Working Group explores how the University of Chicago can address social injustices caused by mass incarceration and begin to imagine how we might create pathways to higher education for system-impacted individuals and communities. 
 

Human Rights BA Fellowship

The Lab offers the Human Rights Lab Track of the Human Rights BA Fellowship program, an opportunity for rising fourth-year students whose BA theses examine human rights issues related to prisons, policing, and the criminal legal system (e.g. solitary confinement, the criminalization of sexuality and reproduction, police misconduct and violence, felony disenfranchisement, selective enforcement, and alternatives to incarceration).
 

Institute on Memory and Human Rights

In September 2019, the Human Rights Lab offered a powerful opportunity for students to examine the process of memorialization and the role of memorials in reckoning with state violence. 
 

Past Projects

Read more about past Lab projects and iniatives.

Stay in Touch!

Stay up-to-date with what’s new in the Human Rights Lab. We send occasional emails with upcoming events, opportunities, and links to what we’re reading. Subscribe!