Human Rights Research Consortium

The Project

The U.S. state of Connecticut and the Land Baden-Württemberg have been partner countries for almost 30 years, both are home to leading centers of human rights research worldwide. These include the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut, the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale University, and various human rights programs at other universities in the state of Connecticut. On the Baden-Württemberg side, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, the Law Faculty of the University of Freiburg with the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS) and the Global Ethic Institute Tübingen are among the leading institutions in this field. Human rights research at these and other institutions is characterized by a strong interdisciplinary basis in various fields of research, including not only law, but anthropology/comparative cultural studies, education, history, engineering, international relations, literature, medicine, philosophy, political science, religious studies, sociology, economics and business administration.

In times of growing global tensions and pressures, which among other things also affect the German-American relations, strengthening cooperation at the country level is more important than ever, especially in the field of human rights research. The present project ties in with the already existing and successful academic exchange at the research and student level and, with the establishment of the Connecticut / Baden-Württemberg Human Rights Research Consortium (HRRC), aims to create an innovative international and  interdisciplinary platform that will promote transatlantic academic cooperation between the two partner countries at the level of research (scholars, researchers at different levels of their career, etc.) and graduate students, including through thematically oriented working groups.