New Books in Human Rights
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network, an academic audio library dedicated to public education. Each episode features scholars discussing their recently published research with another expert in their field. The network offers over 150 channels and 28,000 episodes, covering a wide range of topics. Listeners can explore more content on the New Books Network website and subscribe to their free weekly Substack newsletter.
Episodes
Deborah Mayersen, "Genocide Prevention: An Evidence-Based Approach" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
There has never been a more promising time for genocide prevention. More resources and research are being focused on prevention than ever before. Yet we still lack vital knowledge as to the most effective ways to stabilise and reduce the risk of genocide in current at-risk societies. Genocide Prevention: An Evidence-Based Approach (Cambridge UP, 2026) offers a compelling new approac
Dana Burchardt, "The Authority of International Courts: A Behavioural Framework" (Hart Publishing, 2026)
Why do some international courts wield broad authority while others face pushback or fade into irrelevance? The Authority of International Courts: A Behavioural Framework
(Hart Publishing, 2026) by Dr. Dana Burchardt provides novel
theoretical and empirical insights into this question. It offers a
fresh, interdisciplinary perspective on the authority of international
courts, drawing from law,
Susanne Paola Antonetta, "The Devil's Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today" (Catapult, 2025)
The Devil’s Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today (Catapult, 2025) delves into the forgotten history of eugenics and links it to present-day psychiatry to explain how we as a culture continue to get mind care so wrong.
In The Devil’s Castle, Susanne Paola Antonetta weaves a haunting narrative that confronts the darkest chapters of ps
Daniel Krcmaric, "Above the Law" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
The United States has traditionally been a great promoter of international justice – forging the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals after World War II and leading the way in creating tribunals to address genocides in Yugoslavia and Rwanda after the Cold War. Yet the US views the International Criminal Court – the culmination of the tribunal-building process – as a dire threat.
The US voted against its
Ida Kinalska-Pietruska and Isabella Skrypczak, "A Polish Girl in Siberia: Surviving and Transcending Exile" (Disruption Books, 2026)
A memoir of a child’s forced relocation to Siberia under Stalin’s
Gulag system reveals the potential for true human kindness in the face
of extraordinary hardship.
In April of 1940, six-year-old Ida woke to the sound of pounding on
her door. Soviet soldiers forcibly packed her and her mother onto a
train with thousands of their neighbors and deported them to remote
Siberia, leaving them str
Delia Duong Ba Wendel, "Rwanda's Genocide Heritage: Between Justice and Sovereignty" (Duke UP, 2025)
In Rwanda's Genocide Heritage: Between Justice and Sovereignty (Duke UP, 2025), Delia Duong Ba Wendel contends with the forms of justice and sovereignty enacted through sites of violent memory. Drawing from oral histories and a visual archive of memory work after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, she explores the human rights and government priorities that preserved killing sites and victims' remains
Lawrence Douglas, "The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice" (Princeton UP, 2026)
The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice (Princeton University Press, 2026) offers a gripping account of how law has confronted the most radical forms of state violence. Beautifully written, broad in scope, and bracingly original, it weaves history with political thought to trace the shifting legal response to state aggression and atrocities, from Leopold’s rule ov
Ruth Balint, "Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and Their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe" (Cornell UP, 2021)
In this unique “history from below,” Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and Their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe (Cornell University Press, 2021) chronicles encounters between displaced persons in Europe and the Allied agencies who were tasked with caring for them after the Second World War. The struggle to define who was a displaced person and who was not was a subject of intense debate and
Kristin LaFollette, "Rehumanizing People of the Past: Bioarchaeology, Medical Museums and Archives, and the Human Remains Trade" (SUNY Press, 2026)
Rehumanizing People of the Past: Bioarchaeology, Medical Museums and Archives, and the Human Remains Trade (SUNY Press, 2026) argues that much of the technical
communication used to reference human remains--including reports in
bioarchaeology, labels and descriptions in medical museums and archives,
and web content in the human remains trade--does not adequately
recognize the humanity of the
Fighting for a Foothold: How Government and Markets Undermine Black Middle-Class Suburbia
Prince George’s County, Maryland, is a suburban jurisdiction in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and is home to the highest concentration of Black middle-class residents in the United States. As such, it is well positioned to overcome white domination and anti-Black racism and their social and economic consequences. Yet Prince George’s does not raise tax revenue sufficient to provide consis
Max Morris, "Not Sex Work: Queer Intimacy, Post-identity, and Incidental Encounters in the Digital Era" (Routledge, 2025)
Max Morris's Not Sex Work: Queer Intimacy, Post-identity, and Incidental Encounters in the Digital Era (Routledge, 2025) brings together feminist theory, media studies, and queer research methodologies to offer new, compelling insight the relationships between money, digital platforms, and sex.
Through longstanding engagement with gay, queer, and bisexual men who do not describe themselves as sex
Roundtable on Genocide Studies on the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of Genocide Studies International
2026 marks the 20th year of publishing Genocide Studies International. The journal's first issue was a special issue on genocide in Darfur. Twenty years later, newspapers and podcasts are talking again about mass violence in Sudan.
So I thought it would be a good time to host a discussion among current and former editors of the journal about the state of genocide studies and about how academic jo
Radio ReOrient 14:5: Racial Justice, Human Rights and Surveillance, with Alba Kapoor, hosted by Claudia Radiven and Amina Easat-Daas
In this episode Claudia Radiven and Amina Easat-Daas were joined by Alba Kapoor. Kapoor is the racial justice lead at Amnesty International UK and previously led the policy team at the Runnymede Trust. Alba Kapoor shared the cutting edge work that Amnesty International UK is leading around racial justice, the surveilling of black and brown communities in the UK through existing policy infrastructu
Lisa Siraganian, "The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations, and Robots" (Verso, 2026)
Over the last twenty-five years, the concept of per-sonhood has become central to many contentious debates. Corporations have won free speech protections, as if they were individuals. The right to life or freedom has been claimed on behalf of fetuses, trees, and elephants. The fund of human rights is spilling over into the nonhuman.Lisa Siraganian’s The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Tree
Tim Connor et al., "Global Business and Local Struggle: Reimagining Non-Judicial Remedy for Human Rights" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
In the quest for human rights justice for communities and workers whose rights are breached by transnational businesses, non-judicial mechanisms (NJMs) are often deployed, but how effective are they? Global Business and Local Struggle: Reimagining Non-Judicial Remedy for Human Rights (Cambridge UP, 2025) creates a blueprint for reforming transnational human rights NJMs and for helping communities
The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence
Each year, police officers kill over 1,000 people they’ve sworn to protect and serve. While some cases, like George Floyd’s and Sandra Bland’s, capture national attention, most victims remain nameless, their stories untold. The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence (Beacon Press, 2025) reveals a disturbing truth about these cases: coroners and other death inv
Maria A. Sanchez, "Deference and Divergence in Regional Human Rights Courts" (Cornell UP, 2026)
In Deference and Divergence in Regional Human Rights Courts (Cornell UP, 2026), Dr. Maria A. Sanchez tackles a central tension in global governance: how international human rights courts balance their mandates with the imperative to respect national sovereignty. Despite having similar mandates, the world's three regional human rights courts—the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Co
Alex Powell, "Queering UK Refugee Law: Sexual Diversity and Asylum Administration" (Bristol UP, 2026)
Utilizing critical legal methodologies, Alex Powell's Queering UK Refugee Law: Sexual Diversity and Asylum Administration (Bristol UP, 2026) gives a vital and needed analysis of migration and queer life. With deep consideration to the role of systemic disbelief, experiences of dispersal away from urban areas, contemporary shifts in liberal human rights regimes, and even the impact on legal practit
Sezai Ozan Zeybek, "Animals, Justice, and the Politics of Violence: Shared Struggles in Turkey" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
Animals, Justice, and the Politics of Violence: Shared Struggles in Turkey (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) by Dr. Sezai Ozan Zeybek explores the intricate relationship between humans and animals in the context of modern Turkish history. From drafted animals in war, to urban stray dogs and the role of cattle in the Kurdish conflict, the cases developed in this book show how animal lives are deeply entan
David L. Eng, "Reparations and the Human" (Duke UP, 2025)
The Holocaust and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki invoked in graphic terms the specter of total human destruction. In response, a new international order of reparations and human rights arose from the ashes of World War II. This legal regime sought to subrogate the sovereignty of the nation-state in order to defend the sovereignty of the human being. While the Holocaust’s history is
A Light in the Tower: A New Reckoning with Mental Health in Higher Education
A Light in the Tower argues that excellent education and radical support for mental health struggles can coexist, and provides detailed advice for how to do so. Dr. Katie Rose Guest Pryal debunks claims that supporting student mental health harms educational rigor (coining the term “rigor angst” to discuss the fear that rigor is declining). She outlines actionable steps professors and administrato
Susan Banki, "The Ecosystem of Exile Politics: Why Proximity and Precarity Matter for Bhutan's Homeland Activists" (Cornell UP, 2024)
The Ecosystem of Exile Politics: Why Proximity and Precarity Matter for Bhutan's Homeland Activists (Cornell UP, 2024), relays the events in Bhutan that led to the exodus of one-sixth of the population, and then recounts the activism by Bhutan's refugee diaspora that followed in response. Susan Banki asserts that activism functions like a physical ecosystem, in which hubs of activism in different
Lys Kulamadayil, "Pathology of Plenty: Natural Resources in International Law" (Bloomsbury 2025)
In Pathology of Plenty: Natural Resources in International Law (Bloomsbury 2025), Lys Kulamadayil offers a crucial examination of how international law shapes the exploitation of natural resources in post-colonial States. Kulamadayil reveals how international legal rules can be constitutive, punitive, remedial in creating the paradox of plenty in resource-rich States.
The book revisits the making
The Power of the State: Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, and Minneapolis
When young people began disappearing in Argentina, their mothers searched for answers. Despite laws prohibiting protests and political gatherings, the women still met to walk the Plaza de Mayo, a central square in Buenos Aires near the president’s residence. The government worked to deny their reports of the missing, to discredit the women, and to erode their standing among their peers. But the Ma
Peer Schouten, "Roadblock Politics: The Origins of Violence in Central Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Peer Schouten, of the Danish Institute for International Studies, has written a breathtaking book. Roadblock Politics: The Origins of Violence in Central Africa (Cambridge, 2022). Schouten mapped more than 1000 roadblocks in both the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In so doing, he illuminates the relationship between road blocks and what he calls “frictions of te
Nicole Wegner, "Martialling Peace: How the Peacekeeper Myth Legitimises Warfare" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
Martialling Peace: How the Peacekeeper Myth Legitimises Warfare (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) by Dr. Nicole Wegner is not a book about peacekeeping practices. This is a book about storytelling, fantasies and the ways that people connect emotionally to myths about peacekeeping. The celebration of peacekeeping as a legitimate and desirable use of military force is expressed through the unproble
Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine
Despite reform efforts that have grown in scope and intensity over the last two decades, the machine of American mass incarceration continues to flourish. In Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine: Reform, White Supremacy, and an Abolitionist Future, formerly incarcerated activist and organizer Emile Suotonye DeWeaver argues that the root of the problem is white supremacy.
During twenty-one year
Terence Keel, "The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence" (Beacon Press, 2025)
Each year, police officers kill over 1,000 people they’ve sworn to protect and serve. While some cases, like George Floyd’s and Sandra Bland’s, capture national attention, most victims remain nameless, their stories untold. The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence (Beacon Press, 2025) reveals a disturbing truth about these cases: coroners and other death inves
Andrew I. Port, "Never Again: Germans and Genocide After the Holocaust" (Harvard UP, 2023)
As reports of mass killings in Bosnia spread in the middle of 1995, Germans faced a dilemma. Should the Federal Republic deploy its military to the Balkans to prevent a genocide, or would departing from postwar Germany’s pacifist tradition open the door to renewed militarism? In short, when Germans said “never again,” did they mean “never again Auschwitz” or “never again war”?
Looking beyond solem
Heather Smith-Cannoy et al., "Sex Trafficking and Human Rights: The Status of Women and State Responses" (Georgetown UP, 2022)
Human trafficking for the sex trade is a form of modern-day slavery that ensnares thousands of victims each year, disproportionately affecting women and girls. While the international community has developed an impressive edifice of human rights law, these laws are not equally recognized or enforced by all countries. Sex Trafficking and Human Rights demonstrates that state responsiveness to human
Alexa Hagerty, "Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains" (Crown, 2023)
In Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains (Crown, 2023), anthropologist Alexa Hagerty learns to see the dead body with a forensic eye. She examines bones for marks of torture and fatal wounds—hands bound by rope, machete cuts—and also for signs of identity: how life shapes us down to the bone. A weaver is recognized from the tiny bones of the toes, molded by kneeling before a
Robin F. Hansen, "Prison Born: Incarceration and Motherhood in the Colonial Shadow" (U Regina Press, 2024)
With rigorous scrutiny and deep care, Robin Hansen's Prison Born: Incarceration and Motherhood in the Colonial Shadow (U Regina Press, 2024) offers crucial insight into the intersections of ongoing colonial harms facing Indigenous mothers in Canada. Building from an unplanned call to Hansen from a pregnant, incarcerated Indigenous woman in 2016, Prison Born highlights how custodial prison sentence
Leila Hudson, "Lines of Flight, Assemblages of Home: Syrian Women Displaced" (Syracuse UP, 2025)
While humanitarian organizations and media outlets often reduce Syrian refugees to statistics or brief anecdotes, the real story of displacement unfolds in the intimate spaces of family life. Through the interwoven narratives of five middle-aged sisters from Damascus, Lines of Flight, Assemblages of Home reveals how Syrian women navigate war, exile, and the profound transformation of their familie
Peace A. Medie, "Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence Against Women in Africa" (Oxford UP, 2020)
In Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence against Women in Africa (Oxford UP, 2020), Peace A. Medie studies the domestic implementation of international norms by examining how and why two post-conflict states in Africa, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire, have differed in their responses to rape and domestic violence. Specifically, she looks at the roles of the United Nations and wome
Maja Davidović, "Governing the Past: 'Never Again' and the Transitional Justice Project" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The way we govern the past to ensure peaceful futures keeps conflict anxieties alive. In pursuit of its own survival, permanence and legitimacy, the project of transitional justice, designed to put the 'Never Again' promise into practice, makes communities that ought to benefit from it anxious about potential repetition of conflict. Governing the Past: 'Never Again' and the Transitional Justice Pr
Alexander Cooley and Alexander Dukalskis, "Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Following the end of the Cold War, the world experienced a remarkable wave of democratization. Over the next two decades, numerous authoritarian regimes transitioned to democracies, and it seemed that authoritarianism as a political model was fading. But as recent events have shown, things have clearly changed.In Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics (Oxford UP, 2025
Adam Jones, "Sites of Genocide" (Routledge, 2022)
Adam Jones will be familiar to anyone interested in the field of genocide studies. He's published one of the leading textbooks in the field. He's been influential in drawing attention to the intersection of gender and mass violence. And he's particpated in the emergence of attention to genocides of indigenous peoples over the past decade.
Sites of Genocide (Routledge, 2022) is a compilation of Jon
Mark L. Clifford, "The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong's Greatest Dissident, and China's Most Feared Critic" (Free Press, 2024)
The extraordinary life story of the billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai, a leading Hong Kong democracy activist fighting for freedom of speech who became China’s most famous political prisoner.
Jimmy Lai escaped mainland China when he was twelve years old, at the height of a famine that killed tens of millions. In Hong Kong, he hustled and often slept overnight on a table in a clothing factory whe
159 Glenn Patterson: You Can Choose Who You Are (JP, DC)
In Belfast, good fences can make for bad neighbors. David Cunningham ( Wash U. sociologist, author of There’s Something Happening Here and Klansville, U.S.A and frequent RTB visitor) joins John to speak about the Troubles and their aftermath with the brilliant Northern Irish novelist/essayist/memoirist Glenn Patterson. His fiction includes The International (1999) and Where Are We Now? but the con
Deana Heath, "Colonial Terror: Torture and State Violence in Colonial India" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Focusing on India between the early nineteenth century and the First World War, Colonial Terror explores the centrality of the torture of Indian bodies to the law-preserving violence of colonial rule and some of the ways in which extraordinary violence was embedded in the ordinary operation of colonial states. Although enacted largely by Indians on Indian bodies, particularly by subaltern members
Hamid Dabashi, "After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization" (Haymarket, 2025)
In this episode, we speak with Hamid Dabashi about his new book, After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization (Haymarket, 2025), published by Haymarket Books. Written amid the ongoing war in Gaza, the book confronts what Dabashi describes as the moral and philosophical crisis of the modern West.
After Savagery challenges long-standing traditions of Western thought, arg
Hannah Pool, "The Game: The Economy of Undocumented Migration from Afghanistan to Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025)
To seek asylum, people often have to cross borders undocumented, embarking on perilous trajectories. Due to the war in Afghanistan, the rule of the Taliban, and severe human rights violations, over the past decades thousands of people have risked their lives to seek safety. By what means do they make these journeys, especially when they lack money and passports?Over the course of three years, Hann
Meredith L. Roman, "The Black Panthers and the Soviets: A Comparative History of Human Rights Movements" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
The contemporaneous movements for human rights that Soviet rights defenders and the Black Panthers waged during the 1960s are analysed in a comparative fashion here for the very first time. The book also examines the extra-legal measures that both the KGB and FBI employed to destroy them.The Black Panthers and the Soviets: A Comparative History of Human Rights Movements (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. M
Stephanie DeGooyer, "Before Borders: A Legal and Literary History of Naturalization" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)
How can the novel be a way to understand the development of nation-state borders? An important work in the intersections of law, literature, history, and migration, Stephanie DeGooyer's Before Borders: A Legal and Literary History of Naturalization (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022) offers fascinating insight into understanding naturalization. Tracing the idea of naturalization as it can be understood as a
Dominic Davies and Candida Rifkind, "Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics" (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2025)
Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2025) by Dr. Dominic Davies & Dr. Candida Rifkind is the first in-depth study of comics about refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, and detainees by artists from the Global North and South. Co-written by two leading scholars of nonfiction comics, the book explores graphic narratives about a range of refugee e
Katherine Eva Maich, "Bringing Law Home: Gender, Race, and Household Labor Rights" (Stanford UP, 2025)
The personal nature of domestic labor, and its location in the privacy of the employer's home, means that domestic workers have long struggled for equitable and consistent labor rights. The dominant discourse regards the home as separate from work, so envisioning what its legal regulation would look like is remarkably challenging.
In Bringing Law Home: Gender, Race, and Household Labor Rights (St
Keisha N. Blain, "Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights" (W.W. Norton, 2025)
Even before they were recognized as citizens of the United States, Black women understood that the fights for civil and human rights were inseparable. Over the course of two hundred years, they were at the forefront of national and international movements for social change, weaving connections between their own and others’ freedom struggles around the world.
Without Fear: Black Women and the Maki
Aidan Forth, "Camps: A Global History of Mass Confinement" (U Toronto Press, 2024)
The concentration of terrorists, political suspects, ethnic minorities, prisoners of war, enemy aliens, and other potentially “dangerous” populations spans the modern era. From Konzentrationslager in colonial Africa to strategic villages in Southeast Asia, from slave plantations in America to Uyghur sweatshops in Xinjiang, and from civilian internment in World War II to extraordinary rendition at
Laura Murphy, "Freedomville: The Story of a 21st-Century Slave Revolt" (Columbia Global Reports, 2021)
A celebrated revolution brought freedom to a group of enslaved people in northern India. Or did it?
Millions of people around the world today are enslaved; nearly eight million of them live in India, more than anywhere else. Freedomville: The Story of a 21st-Century Slave Revolt (Columbia Global Reports, 2021) by Dr. Laura Murphy is the story of a small group of enslaved villagers in the Indian s
Lindsey N. Kingston, "Fully Human: Personhood, Citizenship, and Rights" (Oxford UP, 2019)
Lindsey N. Kingston’s new book, Fully Human: Personhood, Citizenship, and Rights (Oxford UP, 2019) interrogates the idea of citizenship itself, what it means, how it works, how it is applied and understood, and where there are clear gaps in that application. This is a wide-ranging, rigorously researched examination of citizenship, statelessness, and human movement. And it is vitally relevant to co
Lucia Sorbera, "Biography of a Revolution: The Feminist Roots of Human Rights in Egypt" (U of California Press, 2025)
It is not Egypt's 2011 revolution that opened a space for women's and feminist activism, but—as Biography of a Revolution: The Feminist Roots of Human Rights in Egypt (U of California Press, 2025) shows—the long history of women's activism that created the intellectual and political background for revolution. By centering the experiences and ideas of multiple generations of women activists and int
Daniel Lomas, "The Secret History of UK Security Vetting from 1909 to the Present" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Using newly available government records, private papers, and documents obtained through Freedom of Information, The Secret History of UK Vetting from 1909 to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Daniel Lomas tells the secret story of UK security vetting from 1909 to the present. Although Britain avoided American-style red-baiting and McCarthy-like witch-hunts, successive UK governments have, lik
Robert Cribb et al., "Detention Camps in Asia: The Conditions of Confinement in Modern Asian History" (Brill, 2022)
Why have Asian states - colonial and independent - imprisoned people on a massive scale in detention camps?
How have detainees experienced the long months and years of captivity?
And what does the creation of camps and the segregation of people in them mean for society as a whole?
Detention Camps in Asia: The Conditions of Confinement in Modern Asian History (Brill, 2022) is an ambitious book s
Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman, "Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century" (Princeton UP, 2022)
Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally connected world. In place of overt, mass repression, rulers such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Viktor Orbán control their citizens by distorting information and simulating democratic
Professional Chat: Home, Migrant Workers, and Decent Work in Supply Chains, with Bonny Ling
Better Innovations, to talk about Taiwan as a home for migrant workers, and decent work in supply chains. After a brief overview of key risks in this area, we touched upon Taiwan’s major legislation to date in a global context, and addressed the importance of economic diplomacy for Taiwan – being seen as a responsible global actor in business and human rights. Drawing on our guest’s experience as
Bulent Gokay and Lily Hamourtziadou, "Human Costs of War: 21st Century Human (In)Security from 2003 Iraq to 2022 Ukraine" (Routledge, 2024)
Human Costs of War: 21st Century Human (In)Security from 2003 Iraq to 2022 Ukraine (Taylor & Francis, 2024) documents and analyses the direct and indirect toll that war takes on civilians and their livelihoods, taking a human security approach exploring personal, economic, political and community security in Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine, in the contexts of the War on Terror and the New Cold War.
Genocide Studies International Partners with New Books Network
Today I’m thrilled to announce a new partnership with Genocide Studies International. GSI is one of the preeminent journals in the field of Genocide Studies. Published by the University of Toronto Press and housed in the Zoryan Institute, GSI is dedicated to “to raising knowledge and awareness among scholars, policy makers, and civil society actors by providing a forum for the critical analysis of
Rachel Killean and Lauren Dempster, "Green Transitional Justice" (Routledge, 2025)
In this episode, host Alex Batesmith sits down with Dr Rachel Killean and Dr Lauren Dempster to discuss their groundbreaking new book, Green Transitional Justice (Routledge, 2025). The conversation explores the urgent need to rethink transitional justice (TJ) in light of the environmental crises facing post-conflict societies.
Dr Killean and Dr Dempster begin by explaining what drew them to the i
Jack Snyder, "Human Rights for Pragmatists: Social Power in Modern Times" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Human rights are among our most pressing issues today. But rights promoters have reached an impasse in their effort to achieve rights for all. Human Rights for Pragmatists (Princeton University Press, 2022) explains why: activists prioritize universal legal and moral norms, backed by the public shaming of violators, but in fact, rights prevail only when they serve the interests of powerful local c
Lieba Faier, "The Banality of Good: The UN's Global Fight Against Human Trafficking" (Duke UP, 2024)
In The Banality of Good: The UN’s Global Fight against Human Trafficking (Duke University Press, 2024), Dr. Lieba Faier examines why contemporary efforts to curb human trafficking have fallen so spectacularly short of their stated goals despite well-funded campaigns by the United Nations and its member-state governments. Focusing on Japan’s efforts to enact the UN’s counter-trafficking protocol an
Jeffrey P. Rogg, "The Spy and the State: The History of American Intelligence" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Intelligence is all around us. We read about it in the news, wonder who is spying on us through our phones or computers, and want to know what is happening in the shadows. The US Intelligence Community or IC, as insiders call it, is more powerful than ever, but also more vulnerable than it has been in decades. It is facing the threat of rival intelligence services from countries like Russia and Ch
Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War" (Princeton UP, 2024)
When World War II ended, about one million people whom the Soviet Union claimed as its citizens were outside the borders of the USSR, mostly in the Western-occupied zones of Germany and Austria. These “displaced persons,” or DPs—Russians, prewar Soviet citizens, and people from West Ukraine and the Baltic states forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1939—refused to repatriate to the Sovie
Lara Montesinos Coleman, "Struggles for the Human: Violent Legality and the Politics of Rights" (Duke UP, 2023)
In Struggles for the Human: Violent Legality and the Politics of Rights (Duke University Press 2024), Lara Montesinos Coleman blends ethnography, political philosophy, and critical theory to reorient debates on human rights through attention to understandings of legality, ethics, and humanity in anticapitalist and decolonial struggle. Drawing on her extensive involvement with grassroots social mov
Mark Fallon, "Unjustifiable Means: The Inside Story of How the CIA, Pentagon, and US Government Conspired to Torture" (Regan Arts, 2017)
From busting drug lords to leading the Pentagon task force charged with bringing the 9/11 terrorists to justice, Mark Fallon has spent his career on the front lines of U.S. national security.
My first guest is one of the most fascinating people I've interviewed. Former NCIS Special Agent in Charge Mark Fallon is a national security consultant, scholar, and expert in counterintelligence and counte
Maïa Pal, "Jurisdictional Accumulation: An Early Modern History of Law, Empires, and Capital" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
With rigorous attention to history and empire, Maïa Pal's Jurisdictional Accumulation: An Early Modern History of Law, Empires, and Capital (Cambridge UP, 2020) is a unique analysis of imperial expansion. Through an analysis of ambassadors and consuls in the Mediterranean—and attention to Castilian, French, Dutch, and British empires—Pal's multifaceted conceptualization of jurisdictional analysis
Jeff Sebo, "The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why" (Norton, 2025)
Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we prioritize humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast number of beings. As a result, we use hundreds of billions of vertebrates and trillions of invertebrates every year for a variety of purposes, often unnecessarily. We also plan to use animals, AI systems, and other nonhumans at even higher levels in the
Eleanor Paynter, "Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present" (U California Press, 2024)
Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Eleanor Paynter responds to the crisis framings that dominate migration debates in the global north. This capacious, interdisciplinary open-access study reformulates Europe's so-called "migrant crisis" from a sudden disaster to a site of contested witnessing, where competing narratives
Daniel J. Solove, "On Privacy and Technology" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Data and privacy have emerged as critical issues in our digitally interconnected era, profoundly influencing individual rights, societal norms, and democratic processes. In his book, On Privacy and Technology (Oxford UP, 2025), Daniel Solove provides a compelling exploration of the intersection between evolving technologies and privacy rights. Drawing on insights from law, philosophy, sociology, a
Chitra Nagarajan, "The World Was in Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict" (Cassava Republic, 2025)
The World Was in Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict (Cassava Republic Press, 2025) is a moving, often provocative, and ultimately vital collection of first hand accounts of people living through the Boko Haram conflict. From abducted girls to brash soldiers, and from community leaders to simple fishermen, this collection provides an insight into the realities of those living through th
Mary Bosworth, "Supply Chain Justice: The Logistics of British Border Control" (Princeton UP, 2024)
In the UK’s fully outsourced “immigration detainee escorting system,” private sector security employees detain, circulate and deport foreign national citizens. Run and organized like a supply chain, this system dehumanises those who are detained and deported, treating them as if they were packages to be moved from place to place and relying on poorly paid, minimally trained staff to do so. In Supp
Studying Myanmar in Times of Crises
How do we to study Myanmar when access to the country is so difficulty? In this episode, Kristina Kironska and Monika Verma from the Myanmar Studies Center at Palacký University Olomouc in the Czech Republic share their insights.
Kristina Kironska is a socially engaged interdisciplinary academic with experience in election observation, research, and advocacy. She is the Co-Director at the think ta
Forest Issac Jones, "Good Trouble: The Selma, Alabama and Derry, Northern Ireland Connection 1963-1972" (First Hill Books, 2025)
Forest Isaac Jones is an award-winning author of non-fiction and essays, specializing in the study of Irish History, the US Civil Rights Movement and Northern Ireland. His latest essay, ‘The Civil Rights Connection Between The USA and Northern Ireland’ was awarded honorable mention in the category of nonfiction essay by Writer’s Digest in their 93rd annual writing competition.
In this interview, h
Benjamin P. Davis, "Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights, and Decolonial Ethics" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
Benjamin P. Davis’s Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights and Decolonial Ethics (Edinburgh University Press 2025) provides one of the first readings, in English or French, of Édouard Glissant as an ethical theorist.
What do we in the West owe those who grow our food, sew our clothes and produce our electronics? And what have we always owed one another, but forgotten, avoided, or simp
Matt Mahmoudi, "Migrants in the Digital Periphery: New Urban Frontiers of Control" (U California Press, 2025)
As the fortification of Europe's borders and its hostile immigration terrain has taken shape, so too have the biometric and digital surveillance industries. And when US Immigration Customs Enforcement aggressively reinforced its program of raids, detention, and family separation, it was powered by Silicon Valley corporations. In cities of refuge, where communities on the move once lived in anonymi
Human Rights in the Trump Era: A Conversation with Kenneth Roth
In this episode of International Horizons, Kenneth Roth, former longtime executive director of Human Rights Watch, joins RBI director John Torpey to discuss Roth’s recent book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abuse of Governments (Knopf, 2025), which reflects on strategies for defending civil, political, economic, and social rights in an increasingly complex internationa
Ahmed M. Abozaid, "Counterterrorism Strategies in Egypt: Permanent Exceptions in the War on Terror" (Routledge, 2021)
Ahmed M. Abozaid’s Counterterrorism Strategies in Egypt: Permanent Exceptions in the War on Terror (Routledge, 2021) reveals how counterterrorism discourses and practices became the main tool of a systematic violation of human rights in Egypt after the Arab Uprising. It examines how the civic and democratic uprising in Egypt turned into robust authoritarianism. By interrogating Egypt’s counterterr
David Hollenbach, "Human Rights in a Divided World: Catholicism as a Living Tradition" (Georgetown UP, 2024)
In his most recent book, Human Rights in a Divided World: Catholicism as a Living Tradition (Georgetown UP, 2024), Jesuit scholar and Georgetown professor, Fr David Hollenbach explains the Judeo-Christian roots of our concept of human rights and the contributions of secular institutions like the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). He explains further when it is right for a
Andrew Clapham, "War" (Oxford UP, 2021)
This book poses the question: How relevant is the concept of war today? Professor Andrew Clapham of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva examines how notions about war continue to influence how we conceive rights and obligations in national and international law. It considers the role international law plays in limiting what is forbidden and what is legitimated
Lea David, "A Victim's Shoe, a Broken Watch, and Marbles: Desire Objects and Human Rights"(Columbia UP, 2025)
Everyday items found at the sites of atrocities possess a striking emotional force. Victims’ garments, broken glasses, wallets, shoes, and other such personal property that are recovered from places of death including concentration camps, mass graves, and prisons have become staples of memorial museums, exhibited to the public as material testimony in order to evoke sympathy and promote human righ
Christian Gerlach, "Conditions of Violence" (de Gruyter, 2024)
Mass violence comes not only from states, but also from people. By analyzing mass violence as social interaction through survivor accounts and other sources, Conditions of Violence (de Gruyter, 2024) presents understudied agents, aims and practices of direct violence and ways of action of those under persecution. Sound history – examining the noises of mass violence and persecution – is particular
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