Andrew Williams is a senior lecturer in law and has been working at Warwick Law School for the past ten years. Previously he was a practising solicitor engaged, in part, in human rights work. Since joining Warwick he has been intent on introducing experiential learning opportunities to undergraduate students particularly in human rights matters. He has now formed a Centre for Human Rights in Practice which is designed to further develop these initiatives.

Experiencing Human Rights: Learning through research

The underlying rationale of this Project is to provide opportunities for students to achieve a better understanding of human rights, in all their complexity and variety, through experiential research in the community. It builds on existing work in the Law School curriculum by

• forging a working partnership with the student body (the Warwick Law Society)
• establishing an institutional memory and identity for student-led human rights research, and
• exploring means by which the curriculum might be further expanded to accommodate such work.

The specific objectives of the project are:

• To encourage, co-ordinate and support identified human rights projects to be conducted by students
• To facilitate the participation of undergraduate students in human rights research and experiential learning opportunities
• To encourage the publication and wider dissemination of scholarly work on human rights in practice resulting from experiences
• To form links with human rights organisations and practitioners with a view to sharing experiences and knowledge
• To create an electronic depository of research, information and reflection accumulated from students, practitioners, and academics involved in the Project.