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The University of Nottingham is running the world’s first massive open online course on contemporary slavery.
Around the world, nearly 46 million people are forced to work against their will for no pay. Responding to this challenge over the past 20 years, a new antislavery movement has shown us that a world without slavery is possible.
Now is your chance to learn about this major human rights issue with The University of Nottingham’s new online course.
Human rights experts
The course, which is delivered by FutureLearn (an online platform offering free course content from the UK’s top universities), features research and teaching in human rights and in past and present antislavery.
Professor Kevin Bales, a world-leading expert on contemporary slavery and one of the leaders of the anti-slavery movement, and a course leader at the University, said: “For the last 20 years I’ve travelled the world, often going undercover, meeting people in slavery, learning about their lives and how they might come to freedom. That knowledge and the experiences and voices of many other experts, including slaves, have gone into this course. It is four weeks of exploration, study and debate that will not just illuminate the reality of slavery today, but show how we can bring it to an end, and all that time learning from past anti-slavery movements.
“To bring you this knowledge, and lead our exploration, we’ve assembled a remarkable team of experts, policy makers, historians, activists and abolitionists. We stand at a turning point in human history, where slavery, with the right resources and solutions, can be brought to an end. This is when we destroy the great lie that people are less than human and can be enslaved. We are counting on you to decide how best to bring slavery to an end—working together on this course, exploring and challenging and together building a world without slavery”.
Learning from history
Professor Zoe Trodd, a leading expert on antislavery from the University, is the other course leader. She said: “Together, through this course, we’ll explore the size and the shape of slavery today. We’ll trace how slave-made goods make their way into our lives, and how we can act against slavery as consumers.
“Perhaps most importantly, we are going to listen to the voices of enslaved people, from the past and from today, and we are going to learn from the true lived experience of slavery.”
You can register for the course now – but hurry, it starts on 17 October. For more details, visit our website.
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Our academics can now be interviewed for broadcast via our Media Hub, which offers a Globelynx fixed camera and ISDN line facilities at University Park campus. For further information please contact a member of the Communications team on +44 (0)115 951 5798, email mediahub@nottingham.ac.uk or see the Globelynx website for how to register for this service.
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Notes to editors: The University of Nottingham has 43,000 students and is ‘the nearest Britain has to a truly global university, with a “distinct” approach to internationalisation, which rests on those full-scale campuses in China and Malaysia, as well as a large presence in its home city.’ (Times Good University Guide 2016). It is also one of the most popular universities in the UK among graduate employers and was named University of the Year for Graduate Employment in the 2017 The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide. It is ranked in the world’s top 75 by the QS World University Rankings 2015/16, and 8th in the UK for research power according to the Research Excellence Framework 2014. It has been voted the world’s greenest campus for four years running, according to Greenmetrics Ranking of World Universities.
Impact: The Nottingham Campaign, its biggest-ever fundraising campaign, is delivering the University’s vision to change lives, tackle global issues and shape the future. More news…