Shayna Plaut
Acting Manager, Centre for Human Rights Research, University of Manitoba
Adjunct Instructor, UA Program in Human Rights Practice
Dr. Shayna Plaut ‘s work sits at the intersection of academia, journalism and advocacy. Her academic writing has been published in Racial and Ethnic Studies, Journalism Practice, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, The European Educational Research Journal, and International Journal for Human Rights, as well as chapters in books published by Routledge, I.B. Tauris and SAGE. She is the Human Rights Editor for Praxis Center––an online resource center for artists, academics and activists, as well as people who identify as all three––where she writes, interviews and solicits work that critically engage with question of change can be. As an educator, researcher and journalist, Shayna has served as a consultant for the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International and a variety of migrant and human rights organizations. Since 2014, Shayna has served as the Research Manager for Strangers at Home, a project of the Global Reporting Centre, which has won numerous journalistic and human rights award.
Since 2004, Shayna has developed and taught a large array of courses focused on the framing of social justice and human rights including at Simon Fraser University where she served as the Simons Research Fellow in International Law and Human Security from 2015–2016. Shayna developed the first human rights courses at Columbia College Chicago and the Graduate School for Journalism at University of British Columbia. Shayna has designed and taught courses on: the ethics and methods of human rights work, migration, social inequalities and human rights journalism. Most recently Shayna, working with four colleagues across Canada and the US, completed an edited book exploring the “messy ethics” of human rights work which will be published by UBC Press.
Shayna happily relocated to Winnipeg in the summer of 2017 where she lives with her partner, two children and two cats. She is currently the Acting Manager for the Centre for Human Rights Research at the University of Manitoba and teaches human rights courses for the University of Arizona Human Rights Practice Program.