News Archive

Three new books from Anthem Press, Cambridge Scholars, and Routledge highlight IU McKinney Dean Karen Bravo’s academic interests (slavery and human trafficking, and business and human rights) and her multidisciplinary initiative, Slavery Past, Present and Future. The topics are center stage in the UN 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.

“Why Slavery Endures,” edited by David W. Bulla, arose from the 2nd Global Conference on Slaveries Past, Present and Future that Dean Bravo organized in Prague, Czechia, in May 2016.  (She is the founder and leader of the Slavery Past, Present and Future project.) The volume includes her chapter on the roles of the average person in today’s slaveries.  Other chapters address, among other things, the legacies of colonialism and structural racism, the case for reparations, and contemporary human trafficking.

“When Business Harms Human Rights: Affected Communities that are Dying to be Heard,” co-edited by Dean Bravo, emerged from a conference co-organized with her two co-editors at Aarhus University, in Aarhus, Denmark, in 2017.  The conference and edited volume focus on providing voice to individuals and communities from across the globe whose lives are affected by businesses. Case studies drawn from Brazil, Colombia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Cameroon, Turkey and elsewhere place human rights holders in the middle of debates about the law and policy of business and human rights.

The Routledge International Handbook of Human Trafficking takes a multi-disciplinary and applied approach to human trafficking, with contributors from the fields of law, international relations, criminal justice, healthcare and social work. Dean Bravo’s chapter “The Role of Past Slaveries in Contemporary Anti-Human Trafficking Discourse: Implications for Policy” examines the policy implications of the endemic comparisons of human trafficking to historic forms of enslavement.