Report: Cambridge Symposium on Protest and Peaceful Assembly
On 13 May 2026, CGHR, together with Amnesty International and the European Centre for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL), convened an invitation international symposium on protest and the right of peaceful assembly. The event brought together leading scholars, practitioners, and rights advocates drawn from law, criminology, sociology, political science, and international human rights to provide multiples entry points on the state of protests and assembly in the world today. Nearly half of the contributors to the Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Assembly – published by Oxford University Press in 2026 and edited by Tabatha Abu El-Haj, Michael Hamilton, Thomas Probert, and Sharath Srinivasan – were present, giving the symposium a dual function as scholarly convening and intellectual backdrop to the public book launch that followed in the evening. Across three panel sessions and a set of opening and closing remarks, the symposium examined the social and political significance of assembly; the legal architecture of the right to peaceful assembly and its gaps; and the state practices – including policing, surveillance, and legislation – that increasingly shape and restrict its exercise in practice.
The latest seminar in the BIEA’s “Eastern Africa in the World” series considers the new geopolitics of eastern Africa and the emerging regional responses.
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