Re-contextualisation of Human Rights and Critical Dialogue: Human Rights beyond Eurocentrism
José-Manuel Barreto works on the critique of the Eurocentric understanding of human rights and explores the history and theory of rights in the context of modern colonialism. He recently edited the volume Human Rights from a Third World Perspective: Critique, History and International Law. His research also addresses questions about the relations between the ‘turn to emotions’ and the human rights culture, and about the ‘affective operations of arts’ and how to defend human rights telling stories.
José-Manuel Barreto has eight years of experience as a human rights lawyer in Colombia, where he acted before the Constitutional Court, lobbied the National Constituent Assembly and advised the House of Representatives’ Human Rights Commission. He has been a Visiting Lecturer at the Universidad de los Andes and a Research Fellow at the University of London. José-Manuel Barreto studied Philosophy and Law at the National University and the Externado University of Colombia. He obtained a MA in Human Rights and a PhD in Law from the University of London.
His project as a Rechtskulturen Fellow explores the possibility of situating human rights in Non-eurocentric histories and geographies, and of developing a critical dialogue between European and Non-European understandings of human rights.
