This study examines how human rights education in universities is enacted in everyday practice beyond the framework of institutional management. Adopting a narrative inquiry approach, the research focuses on a practitioner who has worked for over ten years at a university human rights center. Data was collected over a three-month period from October to December 2025 through in-depth interviews and field observations. The participant voluntarily consented in writing in accordance with research ethics procedures, and the data were triangulated to enhance credibility.
Drawing on bell hooks’ theories of liberatory education and border crossing, the study explores how human rights are practiced, negotiated, and embodied in institutional contexts. The findings suggest that human rights in universities do not function automatically as formal regulations or declarations; rather, they are enacted through the complex and often invisible work of counseling, education, administration, and mediation. These practices are shaped by the practitioner’s situated judgments and embodied engagement. Furthermore, human rights education is revealed not as the implementation of a fixed plan but as an emergent practice continually reconfigured through relationships, contingencies, and events. It also involves the ongoing construction of a public sphere in which discomfort is negotiated and voices can be articulated. By presenting a micro-narrative of "a day in the life of a human rights practitioner", this study calls for a rethinking of both the institutional limitations and the emancipatory possibilities of human rights education in higher education.

Authors:
Yunjin Cho, Chungnam National University, South Korea
Changsoo Hur, Chungnam National University, South Korea

About the Presenter(s)
Yoonjin Cho, PhD candidate in Education at Chungnam National University. Her interests include human rights education, liberatory and critical pedagogy, and qualitative inquiry. She is exploring narrative approaches to human rights in universities.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Friday Schedule

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