The Department has a well established expertise in the areas of human rights, equality and anti poverty work.  This expertise is based on practice  in these areas, teaching, research and public contributions at a range of levels locally, regionally, nationally and globally.  The Department has been aware for some time that although these issues are overlapping in peoples lived experience, within academic and within policy discussion and practice, they have been compartmentalised and boxed separately.  Discrimination and poverty often live in the same person.  Those experiencing discrimination include disproportionately women, the disabled, older people, migrants and Travellers.  Those experiencing poverty include the same people.  Whilst issues of discrimination and poverty are not synonymous, are not they are fundamentally linked.  In order to realise these links, the Department has established a Centre for Rights, Recognition and Redistribution, which has been formally designated as such by the NUIM President.  The Centre’s mission is to advance both knowledge and practice in all sectors to inform policy making and academic and public debates and engage stakeholders within the field of rights, recognition and redistribution.  The Centre aims to realise this mission through working in an applied context using multi disciplinary and multi combination approaches involving academics and practitioners’ contributions.

The Centre focuses on;

1.    Advancement of knowledge

2.    Documenting of rights, recognition and redistribution practices

3.    Inform policy making

4.    Inform academic and public debate

5.    Engage inclusively with stakeholders in the field of rights, recognition and redistribution

The Centre builds on existing work in social policy and in Community Work and Youth Work.  It seeks to progress on a planned phased basis, starting small, and in time, will seek to provide a range of activities and services including;

1.    Conducting applied inclusive research

2.    Drawing together key information

3.    Holding seminars, conferences,

4.    Producing a range of publications

5.    Providing advisory and consultancy services

6.    Providing a stakeholder forum to consider improved ways of addressing concerns in cases of rights, recognition and redistribution