The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Human Rights Research
The rapid development of generative AI tools (understood as AI that can create original content) has led to increased awareness of the tremendous opportunities these tools create for innovative research, but also to serious concern about the risks and challenges they pose.
Researchers in all academic disciplines have been prompted to consider how these tools can be used in research, but also what risk there is for abuse, and what positive or negative impact the tools may have in their disciplines. In the same vein, journals, publishers, and editors, are still in the process of developing policies and practices that allow for taking advantage of the opportunities while simultaneously counteracting the obvious risks associated with the use of such tools.
Special Issue
The NJHR's proposed Special Issue takes the researcher’s perspective and asks how generative AI tools can be used (and abused) in human rights research. How can researchers use these tools to further the academic discipline, and how can we as an academic community counter the risks?
The Special Issue finds its place in the intersection between three different strands of research. First, there exist excellent studies on methods in human rights research (e.g., B.A. Andreassen, C.M. O’Brien and H.-O. Sano (eds.), «Research Methods in Human Rights», Edward Elgar, 2nd ed. 2024), but these studies have not yet included the development of AI. Second, a large amount of literature has been published on substantive human rights issues related to AI (such as the right to privacy, freedom of expression, etc.), but this strand of research is not primarily concerned with the use of AI in research. And third, recently there have emerged studies on how AI can be used in research, but there is little yet on the specific field of human rights research.
How are research methods in human rights affected by the development of generative AI tools? To what extent is insight relating to the use of generative AI tools in other disciplines relevant for human rights research? These general questions form the basis for the Journal's wish to explore the use of generative AI tools in human rights research in a Special Issue.
Call for papers
The Journal wishes to invite papers within this broad theme without being limited to particular sub-questions. Relevant questions may include (but are by no means limited to) how AI tools can promote multidisciplinary human rights research, how they can be used for human rights impact assessments, their potential in qualitative vs. quantitative research, their strengths and weaknesses in data collection vs. analysis, what risks and ethical challenges they pose for human rights research and how these can be handled, how they can promote dissemination and availability of research outputs, how the accessibility of AI may influence the digital divide in research between the global South and North, etc.
NJHR welcomes both multidisciplinary and monodisciplinary papers within relevant academic discipline such as law, political science, sociology, history, and philosophy. Case studies that analyze the use of generative AI tools in ongoing or completed human rights research may also be relevant.
Submission Instructions
To participate in the call for papers, please submit a short abstract (350-500 words) and a short CV/bio (ca. 150 words) no later than 14 February 2025 by e-mail to hr-journal@nchr.uio.no.
Selection of abstracts will be made no later than 28 February 2025, where selected contributors will be invited to submit full papers for peer review. The deadline for submission of final papers will be 15 August 2025. Final papers should comply with the format for regular papers submitted to the NJHR. All papers will be subject to double-blind peer review.
In the selection of abstracts, academic quality and relevance will be the main selection criteria. However, we will also strive to ensure pluralism in terms of disciplines and methodologies, topics and themes, geographical regions, and gender.
Publication should be expected in the spring of 2026 as volume 44 issue 1 or 2.
The full call for papers can be found at the Taylor & Francis website.