You can watch a recording of this event on our YouTube channel here.
Join us as we launch Professor Fareda Banda’s publication African migration, human rights and literature (Bloomsbury, 2020). In the book, Professor Banda examines the topic of migration through the prism of law and literature, using a rich mix of novels, short stories, literary realism, human rights and comparative literature to explore the experiences of African migrants and asylum seekers. As well as discussion among the panel members, author Meron Hadero will perform a reading of her short story The Wall.
Speakers:
Fareda Banda is a Zimbabwean Professor of Law at SOAS, University of London, where she researches and teaches Human Rights of Women, Law and Society in Africa, and Family Law. Photo credit Bill Knight OBE at knightsight.co.uk.
Chaloka Beyani is an Associate Professor of International Law in the LSE Law Department, a former Chair of the Advisory Board of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, a member of the Centre for Climate Change at LSE, and also a member of the Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa at LSE. He is currently a member of the UN Human Rights Fact Finding Mission to Libya as well as a member of the Expert Advisory Group to the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement. He serves as a member of the UK Foreign Secretary's Advisory Group on Human Rights and as a member of the UK’s PSVI Steering Board. Chaloka was the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons (2010-2016) and was a member of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons of the African Union on the Formation of an African Union Government in 2008. He is was an official mediator on devolution in the peace process in Mozambique 2018-2019.
John Eekelar is Emeritus Fellow of Pembroke College in the Faculty of Law, Oxford University. BA in Law, King’s College, London 1963; Rhodes Scholar 1964-5; BCL Oxford 1965; awarded Vinerian Scholarship; Fellow and Tutor in Law, Pembroke College, Oxford, 1965 – 2005; Lecturer in Law, Oxford University, 1966 – 1990; Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Wolfson College, Oxford, 1976 -2000; President, International Society of Family Law 1985-8; Reader in Family Law, Oxford University, 1990 -2005; Co-director, Oxford Centre for Family Law and Policy. 2001; Fellow of the British Academy, 2001; New Zealand Law Foundation, Distinguished Visiting Fellow, 2005; Academic Director, Pembroke College Oxford 2005-9; (Honorary) Fellowship of King’s College, London 2019; Founding co-editor of The International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family (1987 – 2021); General Editor, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (1993 – 2005). Author and co-author of many books and articles, mostly in the area of family law.
Ambreena Manji (@AmbreenaManji) is Professor of Land Law and Development at Cardiff. She was previously Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa (2010-2014). Her research is focused on Law and Society in Africa. It is strongly interdisciplinary and includes work on law in African literature. Her most recent book is The Struggle for Land and Justice in Kenya (James Currey/Boydell & Brewer 2020). Ambreena was president of the African Studies Association UK (2018-2020) and is currently a co-editor of African Affairs. She is a member of the Governing Council of the Arts and Humanities Council (AHRC)
Meron Hadero (@meronhadero) is an Ethiopian-American born in Addis Ababa who came to the U.S. in her childhood via Germany. Winner of the 2020 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, her short story collection, Preludes, is forthcoming in 2022. Meron’s stories have been shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing and published in Best American Short Stories, Ploughshares, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Zyzzyva, New England Review, The Iowa Review, among others. A 2019-2020 Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University, she holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, a JD from Yale, and a BA in history from Princeton. www.meronhadero.com.
Image credit: Pedro Ribeiro Simões (CC BY 4.0)