This research seminar on 25 February 2026, co-organised by the Law and Development Research Group and the Urban Studies Institute, will invite Prof Evelyne Schmid (University of Lausanne) to discuss key findings and reflections on methodology and interdisciplinarity in her research from a five-year empirical and socio-legal project at the intersection of international law and local policy in Switzerland, with a discussion and moderation offered by Dr Elif Durmuş (LDRG, USI).
We invite human rights and international law researchers from the LDRG and the wider UAntwerp Law Faculty community, as well as researchers associated with the Urban Studies Institute, to come together to look at, reflect on, discuss, and engage with the intersections of human rights, the local and/or urban, and international law.
About the research seminar
International law research and practice often focuses on the “state” as such, seen as embodied primarily by the actions of its central government and other central organs (parliaments, courts). While states remain the primary international legal subjects in international law as well as international and regional human rights law, local governments play an essential role in implementing, defending, challenging, contesting, coordinating, and realising human rights in closer interaction with individuals. In today’s pluralist, transnational, decentralised, interconnected, globalised world, international lawyers and human rights researchers need to have at least a basic awareness for the role and relevance of local governments for human rights and international law. At the same time, the angle of human rights can offer a critical, interdisciplinary and useful analytical lens to scholars of the “urban” and the “local”, inviting engagement with global, normative, legal conversations and actors.
About Evelyne Schmid
Evelyne Schmid is Professor of Public International Law at Lausanne University (Switzerland). She led a socio-legal project which identified the concrete mechanisms and processes that facilitate the engagement of subnational (legislative) actors with international treaty obligations (e.g. Engaging with Human Rights: How Subnational Actors use Human Rights Treaties in Policy Processes (Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies 2024, with J.Miaz, M. Niederhauser, C. Kaempfer and M. Maggetti). She is the author of Taking Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Seriously in International Criminal Law (CUP 2015), former Vice-President of the European Society of International Law and a third-party intervenor in Klimaseniorinnen and others v. Switzerland at the European Court of Human Rights. Her current research also deals with corporations and planetary boundaries, (Swiss) arms transfers, universities, and the law of neutrality.
Practical information
Wednesday 25 February 2026, 10-12 a.m.
UAntwerpen Stadscampus, room SJ.214
To make sure we can order enough refreshments during the coffee break, please register before 23/02/2026.
In the afternoon (3-5.30 p.m.), prof. dr. Evelyne Schmidt will also participate in the Round Table on Universities’ Human Rights Duties, hosted by Law and Development Research Group. More information will follow soon!