Seminar: 'Queer Theory and Human Rights: Methods and Critiques'

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Seminar: Queer Theory and Human Rights: Methods and Critiques                                                                               
Time: 5 December 2025, 1pm - 2.15pm
Venue: Finley/Berkowitz lecture Hall, Lauterpacht Centre

This seminar aims to explore the potentials and limitations of international human rights law to enhance transformative and structural change from a critical queer perspective. It brings into conversation Professor Loveday Hodson and Dr David Nnanna Ikpo, who have both interrogated how international human rights norms concerning sexual orientation and gender identity are constructed, received, and contested, while also experimenting with alternative and creative methods to challenge their shortcomings. Through a conversation, we aim to explore how relying on queer theory and various (queer) methods can reveal and, potentially, defy the exclusionary nature of international human rights law, including its (neo-)colonial tendencies and cis-heterosexist origins.

Dr David Nnanna Ikpo draws on storytelling as a central practice in his research on how international human rights norms, especially those concerning issues of sexual orientation and gender identity, acquire meaning within local contexts. Among others, he has used short stories in his research on changing norms towards LGBTQ+ individuals in Nigeria and produced a documentary on same-sex marriages in South Africa and Belgium. He is the author of the novel Fimí Sílẹ̀ Forever and currently conducts a postdoc on conversion practices. He holds a PhD in Law from the University of Pretoria and an Honours degree in Motion Picture Medium from the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance. 

Professor Loveday Hodson has written extensively on the successes and failures of the international human rights project, particularly around issues of gender and sexuality, and has also drawn on various methods, such as the feminist judgment rewriting method, to reimagine how international law could be interpreted and practiced differently. She has also an interest in social movements and has worked with a number of NGOs on the rights of LGBT families. She is Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Leicester and has led several collaborations resulting in edited volumes, such as the Feminist Judgments in International Law (2019) and Research Methods for International Human Rights Law: Beyond the Traditional Paradigm (2019). 

Further information and queries, please contact Dr Lena Holzer: lh850@cam.ac.uk

Please register for the workshop which follows this event: 'Human Rights and Storytelling'