Associate Professor Danielle Celermajer

In 2008, in cooperation with colleagues at the Research Institute for the Asia Pacific, I was awarded a 1.5 million euro grant by the European Commission to establish a networked regional Masters of Human Rights and Democratisation. As director of this program, and of the Sydney Masters of Human Rights, my major institutional focus has thus been the development of strong interdisciplinary pedagogies and structures to support cutting edge, research and practice oriented human rights education in Australia and in the region.

I am also on the Executive the World Democracy Forum, a body that is in the process of developing the leading international network of democracy researchers. In combination with my work in human rights education, I see the development of this network as critical to making the University of Sydney a hub in global democracy and human rights research and education.

Research Interests

The key research question that motivates all of my specific research endeavours is, “What are the principles and practices required to construct socially just political communities in the context of diversity (religious, racial, economic, ethnic and political) and in the light of historical violations?” To this end, I focus on international human rights law and institutions and their domestic application, the negotiation of difference within global and local contexts, and mechanisms for dealing with violations in the past (truth commissions, apologies, international criminal law). Currently, I am working on the interface between religious and secular discourses in the area of human rights, the hegemony of human rights as a moral language and the implications of such hegemony for human rights practice and theory.

I have an ongoing engagement wit the work on Hannah Arendt and am currently continuing my work on how her work can contribute to our thinking about human rights and the religious underpinnings of her thought.

Finally, and in connection with my institutional role as Director of Sydney’s human rights programs, I am exploring human rights education, and in this regard, the role of Universities in bridging scholarly and applied understandings of human rights, Specifically, how can universities constructively contribute to the development of more effective strategies for human rights advocacy?

Grants

• 2011-2013 Addressing the root causes of torture: Actions to reduce and prevent torture in police and military settings in the Asia Pacific region, European Commission, 1.5 million euro.
• Awarded 2008 Developing a networked Asia-Pacific Master's Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation – the first 1.5 million European Commission grant to establish a regional masters in this area.

Publications

Books

• Power, judgement and political evil: in conversation with Hannah Arendt, London: Ashgate, 2010 (Co-edited with Andrew Schaap and Vrasidas Karalis)
• The Sins of the Nation and the Rituals of Apology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009

Book Chapters

• “Inclusion, trust and democracy: Interfaith and faith-secular dialogue as strategies for Muslim Inclusion” in Samina Yasmeen (ed.), Muslim Citizens in the West, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2010
• “Australian Memory and the Apology to the Stolen Generations of Indigenous People” in Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad, eds., Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices, and Trajectories, New York: Palgrave MacMillan., 2010
• “The Ethics of Friendship” in Andrew Schaap, Celermajer, Danielle and Karalis, Vrasidas (eds.), Power, Judgment and Political Evil: Hannah Arendt's Promise, London: Ashgate, 2010
• “From the Religious to the Political Apology: How the Religious Prehistory of Apology Makes Sense of Collective Responsibility” in Christopher Allers and Marieke Smit (eds.), Forgiveness in Perspective, Radolpi, 2010.
• “Can there be a post-secular education for peace?” in Tonya Huber-Warring (Ed.), Teaching <~> Learning Indigenous, Intercultural Worldviews: International Perspectives on Social Justice and Human Rights (premiere vol. in this series). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2008
• “A post-secular human rights framework; religions facing the challenge of universalism” in Toh Swee-Hin and Virginai Carwagas (eds.) Cultivating Wisdom, Harvesting Peace, Griffith University, 2006
• “The Apology in Australia: Re-convenanting the National Imaginary” in Elazar Barkan and Alexander Karn (eds.), Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and Reconciliation, Stanford University Press, 2006.

Refereed Journal Articles

• “Mere ritual? Displacing the myth of sincerity in transitional Rituals”, International Journal of Transitional Justice, forthcoming 2013.
• "Embedding the apology in the nation’s identity", The Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 121: 3, 219-242, with Joanna Kidman, 2012.
• 'Hebraic Dimensions of Hannah Arendt's Thought', Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Vol. 10: 3-22, 2011.
• 'Hannah Arendt: Athens or Perhaps Jerusalem?', Thesis Eleven: critical theory and historical sociology, Vol. 102 (2):24-38, 2010.
• “The State of Free Speech”, Australian Journal of Political Science, Volume 43, Issue 3 September 2008
• “Apology and the possibility of ethical politics”, Journal of Cultural and Religious Theory, Winter 2007
• “Australian Muslims and Secularism”, Australian Journal of Social Issues, Vol 42 No. 1, Autumn 2007
• “If Islam is the Other, who are we?” Australian Journal of Social Issues, Autumn, 2007
• “Seeing the light and hearing the call: The aesthetics of knowledge and thought” Journal of Literature and Aesthetics, March 2007
• “Cultural annihilation and human rights: The forced removal of Aboriginal children”, Human Rights Dialogue, Series 2, No. 5, Spring 2005.
• “A Sorry Nation”, Arena, 36, August 1998
• “Just Outside this Skin”, Law Text and Culture, Vol. 4, No. 1, Autumn 1998
• “Overdue and Understated: Australia’s Draft Third ICCPR Report”, Human Rights Defender, Volume 5, No. 2, June 1996;

Other

• "Indigenous Peoples' Rights", pp. 889-892 in Helmut K. Anheier & Mark Juergensmeyer (ed.) Encyclopedia of Global Studies, Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2012.
• "Measuring Social Change: Principles to Guide Assessment of Human Rights-Based Approaches to Development", ACFID Research in Development Series, Report No. 5; with Law, A. and Riedl, E., June 2012.
• “Revealing the religious underpinnings of political apologies” in Geoffrey Karabin and Carolina Wigura (eds), Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference on Forgiveness, Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2010
• Book Review: The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility Jeffrey Olick Memory Studies, Jan 2009; vol. 2: pp. 129 – 132
• “Praying for a Republican Victory”, New Matilda, February 21, 2007
• “Beyond the “God Delusion”: Towards a Complex Engagement of Religion and Human Rights”, Human Rights Defender, Vol. 16, Issue 2, August 2007
• “US: Rule of Men”, New Matilda, July 5, 2006
• “From the Levinasian Apology to the political apology; reflections on ethical politics”, Refereed paper presented to the Australasian Association of Political Science Conference, September 2006
• “Are we entering a post human rights era?”, Human Rights Defender, Vol. 14, Issue 1, 2005.
• “Overdue and Understated: Australia’s Draft Third ICCPR Report”, Human Rights Defender, Volume 5, No. 2, June 1996;
• Family Law: Issues in the Vietnamese Community. Sydney: Australian Law Reform Commission, 1991
• “Submission and Rebellion: Anorexia and a Feminism of the Body”, Australian Feminist Studies, Number 5, Summer, 1987
• “Submission and Rebellion: Anorexia and a Feminism of the Body”, Australian Feminist Studies, Number 5, Summer, 1987