About the Workshop

This workshop offers UConn graduate students a unique opportunity to learn about human rights practice from Charlie Clements, a notable human rights campaigner/practitioner on the global stage. Using examples from his lifetime of experience and achievement, Charlie will discuss what it takes to start and maintain a successful social movement, with an emphasis on having dialogue with students about how to turn these lessons into future successes in their own human rights work. 

About the Facilitator

As President of Physicians for Human Rights, Charlie Clements, MD, MPH was a key member of the coalition that produced the international treaty to ban landmines that won the Nobel Peace Prize. As a medical practitioner during the civil wars in Central America in the 1980s, Charlie inspired an Oscar-winning documentary about his work. Clements has also served as the Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School

Lunch will be served. Please register below.

Have a food allergy we should be aware of? Let us know in the comments of your registration. 

Department of Sociology: Announcement of Dissertation Defense
The Rise of “Choice” Programs: 100 Years of Social Sorting in Social Welfare Services

Gender, Revealed: Cisnormativity in Everyday Discourses

Department of Sociology: Announcement of Dissertation Defense
Title: The Counter-Conduct of Labor: How Indian Tech Workers Organize in India and the US
Candidate: Rianka Roy
Chair: Manisha Desai
Committee: Andrew Deener, Bandana Purkayastha, David Embrick, Mary Bernstein
Date: April 12, 2024 (Friday); Time: 1 pm to 3 pm EST; Venue: Manchester Hall Library

While social sciences show continued interest in their impact on the real world, there is virtually no research on their impact on one of the major recent transformations, namely the post-socialist one in Central and Eastern Europe. Aiming to fill this void, we set the conceptual and analytical framework for research on the topic. We suggest Cultural Political Economy (CPE) as the starting point, with a view to focus on how social sciences (re)crate social, political and economic imaginaries and thus formulate a particular conception of society. CPE provides us with the tools to explore evolutionary mechanisms and selectivities that produce hegemonic discourses. We then present results of preliminary empirical exploration, which revealed two key dimensions shaping the impact of social sciences – status of profession and transformative power – and on this basis develop four ideal types of social sciences’ role in societal transformations: activators, voyeurs, fellow travellers and marginals. We conclude with four temporal phases with respect to the challenges faced and topics covered – the nascent phase, the reflective phase, the reorientation phase, and new crises and challenges – and two modes of social sciences that are changing over time: social sciences as crisis sciences and social sciences as reflexive sciences.

Dr. Rončević is currently Dean and professor of sociology at the School of Advanced Social Studies in Nova Gorica (Slovenia). He is also professor at the Faculty of Information Studies in Novo mesto (Slovenia). He holds Jean Monnet Chair and is heading Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence “Strategic Observatory for Europe 2030” and is the Fellow of Regional Studies Association.

His main research interest is at the intersection of sociology of development and economic sociology, with a particular focus on innovations and technologies in regional development, sustainable development and the European Union Studies. Throughout his career he has been very active in academic institution building and committed to raising young scholars. He was a visitng scholar at academic institutions in the USA, United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Russia, Denmark, Norway, Lebanon, and Croatia.