On 12 May 2014, as part of a series of lectures entitled “Dilemmas of History in a Global Age,” Professor Lynn Hunt, Humanitas Visiting Professor in Historiography, spoke on the interrelationship between history and human rights with a lecture entitled “Do Human Rights Need a History?“.

Professor Sandra Fredman QC, Rhodes Professor of the Laws of the British Commonwealth and the USA, and Director of the Oxford Human Rights Hub, responded.

Video coverage of this lecture may be found here.

Professor Hunt specialises in the French Revolution, gender history, cultural history and historiography. Her most recent books include “Inventing Human Rights” (2007), “Measuring Time: Making History” (2008), and “Bernard Picart and the First Global Vision of Religion” (with M. Jacob and W. Mijnhardt, 2010).

Sandra Fredman FBA QC (hon) is the Rhodes Professor of the Laws of the British Commonwealth and the USA at Oxford University. She is Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Cape Town and a fellow of Pembroke College Oxford.  She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2005 and was made an Honorary Queen’s Counsel in 2012. She has written and published widely on anti-discrimination law, human rights law and labour law, with a specific focus on gender and socio-economic rights.