CIGJ was delighted to host a master class led by Dr Roland Burke of La Trobe University on human rights scholarship on 16 May 2012. PhD students and early career researchers participated in a lively discussion of the challenges of studying human rights in an interdisciplinary context.

The event opened with Roland discussing his own intellectual trajectory during his PhD work. This was followed by participants engaging with Roland on concerns or issues they have encountered in their research in the human rights field so far.

Roland Burke is the author of Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2010). He joined the History Department at La Trobe in 2009, after extensive undergraduate teaching at the University of Melbourne and now holds an ARC Postdoctoral Award to examine the intellectual history of the arguments made against universal human rights. His doctoral thesis, completed in 2007, examined the role of the Third World in the evolution of the post-war human rights project.  It was awarded the Chancellor’s Prize for Excellence (2008). Roland was also the recipient of the R.M Crawford Medal from the Australian Academy of the Humanities (2010), and the La Trobe Excellence in Research Award for Early Career Researchers (2010). His recent research has focused on transnational organizations and institutions, principally the UN and the Group of 77.