Michele Grigolo is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Nottingham Trent University. His research interests focus on human rights, sexuality, cities and urban space, the right to the city, children’s rights and clothing.

All are welcome to this  seminar, where Michele Grigolo will present ongoing reflections and analysis of a collective project based at Nottingham Trent University (UK) in partnership with Nottingham-based charity Sharewear. The seminar starts by presenting and situating the project’s theoretical framework, through which the group seeks to advance a new approach to understanding and practicing human rights through the lens of the right to the city and Henri Lefebvre’s work on space production underpinning it. The methodology and findings from an empirical study of children’s right to clothing are subsequently introduced, as a way to illustrate how a right to the city approach could be used and mobilised for the analysis of different key aspects of human rights. While drawing mainly on a sociological perspective on human rights, the project proceeds from the belief that a right to the city approach could be a useful tool for students and scholars across different disciplines who are interested in the critical study and exploration of (new) human rights (re)centred on and in urban life and space.

Grigolo's research on new human rights emerging from relations and practices centred in the urban space has been disseminated through a variety of publications, including his monograph The Human Rights City: New York, San Francisco, Barcelona (2019, Routledge).