The Institute for Human Rights (IHR) serves as UAB's focal point for academic research studying human rights and related topics.
Cutting-edge research relating to access, justice, and human rights
IHR brings perspectives of social justice and human rights to the forefront of scientific research at UAB. The Institute positions UAB as a leader in research in human rights by prioritizing systemic and structural perspectives affecting underserved and disadvantaged communities that experience health and other inequities, injustices, and lack of inclusion and access. IHR engages in multi-level research processes organized around four intersecting core working groups:
- Human Rights and Health
- Human Rights and Methods
- Human Rights and Technology
- Human Rights and Society
Evidence-based scientific solutions to social problems centering underserved communities
IHR’s mission is to amplify humanistic, empirical, and evidence-based solutions to some of the most critical global, national, and local-level social problems facing our society. To do this work, IHR engages with local, national, and international community partners that represent groups most affected by social exclusion. Using mixed methods scientific research, including quantitative, qualitative, and community-based participatory approaches, IHR facilitates collaborative research among researchers in the social sciences and humanities with a focus on human rights, broadly understood, between these scholars and researchers outside the social sciences and humanities, and between researchers and community partners.
Training and professional development for researchers incorporating a human rights lens
IHR serves as a central platform for scientific research and training in the social sciences, humanities, and justice-related fields. For researchers at all levels, IHR offers opportunities to learn how to incorporate a social science and humanities lens into their existing research agenda, how to implement community-based and multistakeholder research processes, and how to use humanistic social science methods in non-social science and humanities fields.
IHR trains scholars across campus who aspire to incorporate a social justice and human rights lens into their existing research agenda. For social scientists and humanities scholars, IHR offers training on grant writing and team science.
Engaging with researchers across campus and beyond
IHR engages in research collaborations with researchers and centers on campus and at leading national and international universities. IHR’s research portfolio includes, among others, collaborations with multiple university-wide interdisciplinary research centers (UWIRC) at UAB and national and international universities. IHR further engages national and international community partners in research processes designed to elevate the voices of those not usually included in research.