Professor Paul Gready
Co-Director of the Centre for Applied Human Rights

Profile

Biography

Paul Gready is the Co-Director of the Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR). He is a social scientist with research interests in universities as sites of protection and activism, transitional and transformative justice, the arts and human rights, and human rights cities.

Paul was the founding Director of CAHR in 2007, and prior to coming to York worked at the University of London. At around the same time as he started working at CAHR he helped to establish the Journal of Human Rights Practice, where he is still a co-editor. For over three decades he has sought to strengthen interdisciplinarity in human rights practice, through both teaching and various research-related activities. Prior to entering the academy he worked for Amnesty International (on East and Southern Africa, and India), and for a number of other international and national human rights organisations.

Paul currently leads two collaborative and interdisciplinary research projects:

• UNESCO Chair, Protecting Human Rights Defenders and Expansion of Political Space (2023-26): The Chair and associated network support research, training and capacity building, and knowledge exchange and network building relating to universities as sites of activism and protection. The Chair’s activities are funded by the Open Society Foundations. 
• Art Rights Truth (2022-25): This AHRC funded project explores whether collaborations between artists and activists can help shape new languages for, and approaches to, human rights in the context of multiple contemporary crises. The project case studies are Covid legacies, social and environmental justice, transitional justice and its aftermaths (Canada, Colombia), and human rights in local settings (York). 

Paul is happy to consider supervising PhDs on the following topics:

• Universities as sites of activism and protection
• Arts and human rights activism
• Transitional and transformative justice
• Human rights cities