Human Rights and War Crimes Investigations: Methods
This seminar offers an introduction to the concept and practice of human rights research and investigations, with an emphasis on the collection and analysis of online open source information. In addition to lectures and readings, the course will engage students in the Human Rights Investigations Lab at Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center, an effort that supports the work of Amnesty International, the Syrian Archive, and a number of other organizations that are working to bring awareness to and collect evidence in support of international atrocity cases, including human rights law firms and international commissions of inquiry. In the seminar and lab, students will have an opportunity to engage in one or more real-world investigations.
Topics
- Construct a research and investigations plan, which includes a clear and interesting research question, a description of open source research methods that can be used to answer that question, and an assessment of ethical issues raised by the research question and proposed research methodologies. Use a diverse set of open source research methodologies, including reverse image searching, geolocation, chronolocation, source analysis, and network analysis. Use a diverse set of open source research tools, including but not limited to InVid, Google Earth Pro, Tweetdeck and Maltego, and perform advanced online searches on Google, Facebook and Twitter. Draft professional quality memoranda and research reports for real-world clients.
Official catalogue course objectives and student learning outcomes
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026-2027