2023.07.07
UNESCO Chair in Cultural Rights
The UNESCO Chair in Cultural Rights is the first UNESCO Chair ever awarded to the University of Copenhagen. Helle Porsdam, Professor of History and Cultural Rights is the chair holder.
The research focuses on the four core cultural human rights outlined in the UDHR and the ICESCR: the right to education, the right to participate in cultural life, the right to benefit from science, and authors’ rights.
The UNESCO Chair in Cultural Rights is the first UNESCO Chair ever awarded to the University of Copenhagen. Helle Porsdam, Professor of History and Cultural Rights is the chair holder. Activities were launched in September 2017 and the focus areas are:
- Cultural heritage law or cultural law
- Gender
- The right to science
- The relationship between the three parts of Article 15,1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: the right to participate in culture, the right to benefit from the progress of science and its products, and author’s rights
“Cultural rights, a new and hot field of human rights research, provides a much-needed discourse or common forum in which we can explain and negotiate cultural meanings when controversies arise over e.g. cultural heritage or the role of science in society and politics. Culture and law are inseparable: Culture forms the basis for the interpretation and adoption of legal rules – and law formalizes cultural norms and rights.”
Helle Porsdam, Professor of History and Cultural Rights and UNESCO Chair in Cultural Rights, University of Copenhagen
The UNESCO Chair in Cultural rights organizes a number of events and happenings relating to cultural heritage law, gender, and the right to science.
Conferences
The UNESCO Chair in Cultural Rights will organize a number of conferences and workshops, each of which will focus on an issue that relates to cultural rights.
In January 2018, we participated in a Workshop at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York on the right to science.
The conference, “Women in Culture and Science Symposium”, took place on 8 March 2018 at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Organized by the UNESCO Chair in cooperation with the Danish permanent delegation to UNESCO, this symposium was an official part of the 2018 International Women’s Day celebrations at UNESCO.
On 10 December 2018, we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the conference, “The right to science – then and now”, which took place at the University of Copenhagen.
We co-organize the Cambridge-Harvard Right to Science Study Group which holds regular meetings: https://www.gloknos.ac.uk/research/research-groups/right-to-science-group.
Iaru Summer Schools
In 2017, the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Rights organized and taught the International Association of Research Universities (IARU) summer school course, “Cultural rights: A promising global discourse” at the University of Copenhagen. This course, which was repeated until the summer of 2022, focused on cultural rights discourses and their possibilities:
Migration and advances in technology have increased the level of cultural exchange and intermingling, but they have also fostered cultural clashes and incompatibilities that were previously masked by distance. Can cultural rights become a global discourse for supporting inclusive social and political development, and for fostering intercultural dialogue for the mutual understanding of cultures? And can cultural rights become a prime mover by providing a much-needed cultural legitimacy for human rights?
Starting in the summer of 2023, the course will focus on one of the four core cultural rights: the right to benefit from scientific progress and its products – or just the right to science.
UNESCO lecture series on science, society, and politics at the University of Copenhagen
A series of public talks/events open to the general public and organized in cooperation with the Danish National Commission for UNESCO, and Information. The talks/events debate the role of science, scholarly research, and universities in society today. There is one talk/event every semester.
The UNESCO Chair in Cultural Rights is currently preparing articles, both academic and popular, on the right to science as well as perspectives on political and funding demands on open access/open data.
List of publications from Helle Porsdam:
Questions related to the UNESCO lecture series on science, society, and politics at the University of Copenhagen should be addressed to Birgitte Lohse Meinertz at birgitte.lohse.meinertz@jur.ku.dk.
Researchers
| Name | Title | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Helle Porsdam | Professor | +4535331522 |
Contact
PI Professor
Helle Porsdam
E-mail: helle.porsdam@jur.ku.dk
Phone: +45 35 33 15 22
Past events
