UNESCO Call for Proposals: Academic Research Conference on Safety

Deadline: 9 January 2017

UNESCO, in collaboration with the Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), is pleased to invite contributions from the international community of scholars to the 2017 Academic Research Conference on Safety of Journalists.

The academic conference, from 3 to 4 May 2017, is a special academic session which will be held alongside UNESCO’s main celebration of World Press Freedom Day 2017 in Jakarta, Indonesia.

UNESCO welcomes perspectives from any academic discipline, illuminating various aspects of the theme in diverse societal contexts. The killing, harassment and intimidation of journalists not only constitute violations against the targeted individuals and their families, but also restrict the flow of information and ideas directly and indirectly, by creating a climate of fear and self-censorship.

The conference considers the theme of journalists’ safety holistically. The conference will cover preventive, protective and pre-emptive measures; it will include combating impunity as well as promoting a social culture that prizes press freedom and is tolerant of different viewpoints. UNESCO welcome contributions from any disciplinary perspective and scholarly approach, from quantitative or qualitative empirical studies to conceptual explorations of the theme.

For the 2017 conference, we are particularly (but not exclusively) interested in scholarship that examines:

how a culture of intolerance intimidates journalists and other commentators;
threats from the ground from state and non-state actors including the public;
the effectiveness of existing training and other programmes addressing journalists’ safety and impunity;
journalists’ safety and impunity from a comparative, multi-country perspective;
“meta” questions of how to frame research into the safety of journalists.

Focus Areas