Research Methods in Human Rights

Edited by Bård A. Andreassen, Professor, Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo, Norway, Claire Methven O’Brien, Reader in Law, School of Law, University of Dundee, UK and Hans-Otto Sano, Senior Researcher, Emeritus, Danish Institute for Human Rights, Denmark

Contents:

Preface xii
1 Introduction to Research Methods in Human Rights: approaches and
trends in human rights methodology and methods 1
Bård A. Andreassen, Claire Methven O’Brien and Hans-Otto Sano

PART I HUMAN RIGHTS RESEARCH AND LEGAL APPROACHES
2 Legal methodologies and human rights legal research: challenges and
opportunities 13
Siobhán McInerney-Lankford
3 Comparative human rights law 37
Michael Riegner
4 Studying human rights in plural legal contexts: an exploration of water
laws in Zimbabwe 57
Anne Hellum

PART II HUMAN RIGHTS RESEARCH IN SOCIAL SCIENCE AND
THE HUMANITIES
5 Comparative analyses and institutional pluralism in human rights research 79
Bård A. Andreassen
6 Economics and human rights 100
Edward Anderson
7 From the normative to the transnational: methods in the study of human
rights history 119
Steven L. B. Jensen and Roland Burke
8 The potential of ethnographic methods for human rights research 137
Sally Engle Merry

PART III QUALITATIVE METHODS IN HUMAN RIGHTS RESEARCH
9 Qualitative methods of data generation and analysis 151
Edzia Carvalho
10 Inside the organization: methods of researching human rights and
organizational dynamics 178
Hans-Otto Sano and Tomas Max Martin

PART IV QUANTITATIVE METHODS IN HUMAN RIGHTS RESEARCH
11 Quantitative methods in advocacy-oriented human rights research 201
Margaret Satterthwaite and Daniel Kacinski
12 A comparative assessment of composite measures of human rights performance 223
Annie Watson, Matthew Rains, Stephen Bagwell, and K. Chad Clay
13 Social network analysis in human rights research 247
Anna-Luise Chané and Arjun Sharma

PART V CHALLENGES AND PRACTICES IN HUMAN RIGHTS RESEARCH
14 Research ethics for human rights researchers 267
George Ulrich
15 Mixed methods in human rights 290
Malcolm Langford
16 Human rights-based approaches: methodological challenges 319
Wouter Vandenhole
17 Researching the human rights impact of new and emerging digital technologies 337
Lorna McGregor
18 Assessing work at the intersection of health and human rights: why,
how and who? 360
Laura Ferguson