Human Rights in the Digital Age

Theme lead: Professor Ella McPherson 

CGHR’s Human Rights in the Digital Age theme addresses the emergent and rapidly evolving changes wrought to human rights practices and norms by the use of digital technologies. With respect to practices, this includes human rights fact-finding and advocacy; with respect to norms, this includes human rights related to communication, information, expression, privacy, assembly and association. 

The research and activities under this theme approach human rights from a communications perspective and, as such, are particularly concerned with pluralism and solidarity. Another core concept of the theme is risk, particularly risk governance around perceived threats to security and facticity.   

Praxis research in this theme includes academic startup, The Whistle, as well as the Digital Verification Corps and innovative, interactive tools such as the Social Life of Data experience, the Digital Human Rights Toolkit, and the chatbot providing information for asylum-seekers in the UK.  Empirical scholarship includes investigations of human rights fact-finding using digital tools, reimaginings of the practice of witnessing, and explorations of the digitally-mediated freedom of assembly.   

Research Project

Open Source Investigation for Academics

News

23/06/26

Report: Cambridge Symposium on Protest and Peaceful Assembly

Dr Antoine Sander looks back on this invitation international symposium, convened by CGHR, Amnesty International and European Centre for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL).

Publication

Social Media, Democracy, and the Popular Public Sphere

In this article, Dr Antoine Sander considers social media’s impact on the public sphere.

News

17/06/26

Report: Assemble! Protest Politics and Rights 

On 13 May 2026, CGHR hosted ‘Assemble! Protest Politics and Rights’, a public panel to mark the launch of the Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Assembly.

Publication

The Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Assembly

The Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Assembly examines assembly as a distinct political and social practice that lies uneasily at the heart of the modern state.

Article

The new geopolitics of eastern Africa: Emerging regional responses

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.