GLaD Program researcher, Dr Sean Mulcahy, recently visited the University of Warwick after securing a Visiting Research Fellowship there. Sean has had a long-standing relationship with Warwick forged during a Monash Warwick Alliance Joint PhD.
The Visiting Research Fellowship provided Sean with the time to write up a paper presented at the Global Meeting on Law and Society in Lisbon on drugs, dance and human rights. Both the presentation and the paper emerge from a larger project, funded by the Australian Research Council, which explores a “post-human rights” approach to drug policy. This four-year research project explores whether and how human rights frameworks might advance or hinder drug law reform. Sean is a research officer on the project being led by Associate Professor Kate Seear. The project applies a critical lens to issues surrounding drugs and human rights. The presentation and paper both explore questions about the ‘form’ that parliamentary human rights scrutiny processes take, and the relationship between form and the nature and content of human rights in Australia.
The Visiting Research Fellowship also afforded the opportunity to conduct interviews with British human rights experts about how they view human rights and how this impacts people who use drugs. These interviews form part of the larger, aforementioned project on human rights and drug policy. Sean was also able to meet with experts at Warwick, such as Professor John McEldowney, a former chair of the Study of Parliament Group, about how parliament applies human rights principles to drug-related legislation.
We’ll be reporting more on the findings from our interviews with human rights experts soon and will post results on this website as well as through our Twitter page, which you can follow @GLADLaTrobe.