HRSJ Courses
Program: MAHRSJ
Course Code: HRSJ301
Title: Seminar in Human Rights and Social Justice
Description: As a core and foundation course for the MA Program, it aims to equip students with fundamental knowledge on various dimensions of human rights, emphasizing its historical, theoretical and philosophical foundations. Students will master the key human rights concepts and vocabulary, gain knowledge on the main international human rights protection systems, as well as become knowledgeable about the recurrent debates and controversies related to human rights.
Credits: 3.0
Prerequisites:
Corequisites:
Program: MAHRSJ
Course Code: HRSJ302
Title: Justice, Knowledge, and Change
Description: The course combines theory and practice to critically question how various actors work for social change. Taught in parallel to HRSJ 307 (Foundations of Social Science Research), HRSJ 302 offers a complementary space for reflection on producing knowledge, which is turned towards change. It asks how we define and respond to injustice, providing frameworks to consider the power relationships inherent in those processes. Human rights practitioners are invited to class to discuss how they identify and respond to a particular issue in their work. HRSJ 302 will provide you with a toolkit of critical questions leading towards HRSJ 303 (Project Development, Monitoring, & Evaluation), where you will put these questions into action.
Credits: 3.0
Prerequisites:
Corequisites:
Program: MAHRSJ
Course Code: HRSJ303
Title: Project Development, Monitoring, & Evaluation
Description: Moving from identifying a problem to developing and implementing a proposal responding to that problem is a key challenge for governments, public sector organizations, and civil society organizations alike. This course develops the skills and knowledge needed to manage that process. Emphasizing practical, project-based work, it covers how to define and articulate a project scope, identify and engage key stakeholders, and define roles, responsibilities, and deadlines within a team. It also looks at how to benchmark, monitor, and evaluate whether your project is achieving its stated goals. Participants will also be introduced to the role of the project manager and the fundamental concepts and competencies necessary to lead human rights and social justice projects.
Credits: 3.0
Prerequisites:
Corequisites:
Program: MAHRSJ
Course Code: HRSJ304
Title: Contemporary Challenges in Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Description: The course aims to discuss and analyze economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR)
as a subcategory of human rights. The course will focus on the historical, theoretical, and practical
development of ESCR, including international instruments and jurisprudence. Specific rights such as the
right to decent work, social security, adequate living standards, housing, food, health, education, and
culture will be discussed in detail with a particular emphasis on the current economic, social and cultural
challenges facing Armenia and the region. Three hours of instructor-led class time per week.
Credits: 3.0
Prerequisites:
Corequisites:
Program: MAHRSJ
Course Code: HRSJ305
Title: Social Justice and Identity
Description: Taking an intersectional approach, this course explores the relationship between social justice and identities/identifiers including gender, sexuality, ‘race’ and ethnicity, disability, religion, and class. It asks how identity is constructed and explores its lived social reality. It links questions of identity construction with analysis of how power relationships and structures of domination drive inequity across different social identities, statuses, and groups. It examines experiences of inequity on both individual and structural levels. Finally, it explores responses to those inequities, taking in both (a) state policy and (b) civil society and social movements’ response, as well as the interplay between the two.
Credits: 3.0
Prerequisites:
Corequisites:
Program: MAHRSJ
Course Code: HRSJ306
Title: Human Rights in Action
Description: This course aims to introduce human rights in action, especially during the application of criminal justice institutes. Important institutes such as arrest and other compulsory measures as detention and other restraint measures (choosing or changing them), the proving, including investigative actions, proceedings involving minors and other vulnerable groups, and the basic content of fundamental human rights (conditions for their implementation, participants’ rights, responsibilities) will be introduced. The above institutes will be represented within the framework of judicial protection (including within the review proceedings)․
The course will be carried out using the methods of presenting theoretical materials and then solving practical problems. In particular, the topics will be accompanied by the presentation of the study of a specific case/cases and their domestic/national and international legal regulations.
Credits: 2.0
Prerequisites:
Corequisites:
Program: MAHRSJ
Course Code: HRSJ307
Title: Foundations of Social Science Research
Description: Research and evidence production are crucial to both advocacy and intervention design. This course therefore introduces you to common methods and standards in qualitative and quantitative research. It develops your ability to critically analyse research, enabling you to both challenge others’ claims and yourself propose relevant research designs to answer specific questions. This will support you to conduct your own empirical research as part of the master’s thesis project and beyond. In line with HRSJ 302, the course encourages reflection on the ethics of research. It also questions how we construct knowledge and recognize expertise, as well as how our values and positionality shape knowledge production.
Credits: 3.0
Prerequisites:
Corequisites:
Program: MAHRSJ
Course Code: HRSJ308
Title: Law and Religion
Description: nan
Credits: 2.0
Prerequisites:
Corequisites:
Program: MAHRSJ
Course Code: HRSJ309
Title: Human Rights in the Security Sector
Description: Human Rights in the Security Sector will present the link between security and human rights is important. This link is reinforced if we consider that human rights define human security. Individual, international, and national developments require the protection of human rights; therefore, there is no security without the protection of human rights. Development requires respect for human rights, and respect for human rights prevents conflicts. Using the concept of human rights in the security sector helps actors like the police and the military to understand their role as duty-bearers in providing security as a public service to the people – the rights-holders. Security sector and human rights are also closely associated with democracy and the rule of law. The course will introduce such specific areas as: border security and human rights; conditions of detention and imprisonment, prohibition of torture; ill-treatment prevention issues by police and in police detention facilities; this will also include other law-enforcement bodies; right to a fair trial, etc.
Credits: 3.0
Prerequisites:
Corequisites:
Program: MAHRSJ
Course Code: HRSJ310
Title: The Human Rights Clinic
Description: The Human Rights Clinic is optional; students may choose to complete the clinic or an internship over two months period. The Human Rights Clinic will provide students with the opportunity to acquire hands-on experience under supervision. Students will apply the knowledge gained in human rights to practical situations thereby engaging directly with current human rights issues in their legal jurisdictions, local communities, or more globally. The clinic will run part-time. The first two weeks will propose a schedule of more intensive, practitioner and academic-led training. The subsequent six weeks will be composed of regular group meetings and supervision from the faculty supervisor. Students will select one of two tracks and complete small-group projects within them: Legal Clinic and Social Justice Clinic. Projects employ a variety of methods and may support social science research, litigation, advocacy, policy and program development, or extend technical guidance on human rights to civil society organizations, national human rights institutions, governments, UN human rights bodies and other international organizations.
Credits: 3.0
Prerequisites:
Corequisites:
Program: MAHRSJ
Course Code: HRSJ311
Title: Internship
Description: The AUA HRSJ Internship program provides Graduate students with a unique chance to gain experience in the field of human rights and justice, explore new interests, develop skills and create a network of contacts. As interns, students will be actively engaged in an intensive learning experience with local and international human rights experts and policymakers, thus promoting their personal and professional growth. The internship is optional. It will run part-time over two month’s period. Throughout the internship the intern will receive direct and close supervision and instructions by the supervisors of the hosting institution. Every intern will be given a list of tasks to be performed at the hosting institution.
Credits: 6.0
Prerequisites:
Corequisites:
Program: MAHRSJ
Course Code: HRSJ312
Title: Master’s Thesis
Description: The master’s thesis allows students to independently research a question of their own choosing. It is an opportunity to develop expertise in the chosen area, requiring substantial reading and, where appropriate, empirical research. Students will be supervised by MA HRSJ faculty, with whom you will have regular meetings individually and/or in small groups to discuss and develop your work. The master’s thesis course will also propose whole-group meetings to discuss key aspects of the thesis. These include academic writing and citation practices, reviewing and synthesizing literature, and designing research questions.
Credits: 3.0
Prerequisites:
Corequisites:
Program: MAHRSJ
Course Code: HRSJ313
Title: International Human Rights Advocacy
Description: This course is dedicated to constitutional and legislative mechanisms for advocating individual human rights and public interest affairs. This includes administrative and judicial remedies of individual rights protection. The course pays a specific attention to judicial proceedings: administrative, civil, criminal and constitutional (e.g. preparation of defense).Students are invited to observe court trials to be equipped with both theoretical and practical knowledge and skills. Students will learn how to reveal systemic problems hindering protection of individual human rights and the use of systemic remedies to overcome these problems. This includes obtaining knowledge on law-making processes within the Government and Parliamentary initiatives, as well as internal processes within these institutions. The course also discusses competences of the Government, Parliament and the President of the Republic in the context of the system of checks and balances and their effects on the effectiveness of the public advocacy process. All the mentioned issues are discussed based on examples of concrete rights and their protection (right to liberty and security; right to a fair trial, right to freedom of speech, etc.). [Formerly: Public Advocacy]
Credits: 3.0
Prerequisites:
Corequisites:
Program: MAHRSJ
Course Code: HRSJ314
Title: Environmental Rights and Justice
Description: The course presents the foundations and principles of environmental rights and justice. It focuses on developing a broad understanding of factors that shape the emergence and perpetuation of environmental injustice, including mechanisms that give rise to class, gender, and other forms of inequity. Students will learn the causes and consequences of inequitable distributions of environmental benefits and hazards, and how to analyze and address inequalities in the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens from the perspectives of environmental policy and law. Students will practice cost-benefit and risk analysis in relationship to environmental injustices
Credits: 1.0
Prerequisites:
Corequisites:
Program: MAHRSJ
Course Code: HRSJ334
Title: European Human Rights Protection Mechanisms
Description: The course provides an overview of the main mechanisms of human rights protection in Europe. Students explore human rights protection mechanisms under the Council of Europe Convention on Human Rights, the European Social Charter, the Convention for the Prevention of Torture and others. Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and human rights documents of the Council of Europe, OSCE, European Union will be studied as well. Students also examine the possibilities of human rights protection through standard-setting and monitoring mechanisms in Europe.
Credits: 3.0
Prerequisites:
Corequisites: