Steven JensenSteven L. B. Jensen is Senior Researcher at The Danish Institute for Human Rights. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Copenhagen. He is author of The Making of International Human Rights. The 1960s, Decolonization and the Reconstruction of Global Values (Cambridge UP 2016) which in 2017 was awarded the prizes both for Best Book on Human Rights and the Chadwick Alger Prize for Best Book on International Organisation from the International Studies Association. He has published widely on topics such as global health, human rights, global inequality, decolonization, the United Nations and genocide. His current book project is a history of social and economic rights in 20th century international politics. 

Steven is the co-editor of Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History with Charles Walton (Cambridge UP 2022) and Histories of Global Inequality: New Perspectives with Christian O. Christiansen (Palgrave Macmillan 2019). He has also co-edited two special issues of The Nordic Journal of Human Rights: “Nordic Histories of Human Rights” (2018) and “The Domestic Institutionalization of Human Rights” (2019). His work has appeared in Human Rights Quarterly, Oxford Handbook on Economic and Social Rights, Cambridge History of Rights vol. I-V.   
Before joining The Danish Institute for Human Rights, he previously held positions with UNAIDS and The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has also been a visiting researcher at Yale Law School, History Faculty, University of Oxford, The Bonavero Institute for Human Rights, University of Oxford and the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. Steven has been a contributor to Open Global Rights and the South African newspaper Daily Maverick (2019-2023). In 2024, he was appointed as member of the Danish Expert Group on Global Health under the Alliance for Global Health. 

During his fellowship at The Norwegian Nobel Institute, Steven will work on a project focusing on the UN debates on human rights and tech from 1968 to 1975 where the topic appeared on the international human rights agenda. The project’s working title is: “’To keep watch on the private lives of others’: UN Diplomacy and the Emergence of Tech as an International Human Rights Question, 1968-1975.” 

Selected publications: 

Steven L. B. Jensen & Kathryn Sikkink (2025), “Latin American and Caribbean contributions to human rights law”, Latin American International Law in the 21st Century, edited by Alejandro Chehtman, Alexandra Huneeus, and Sergio Puig. Oxford University Press. 
Steven L. B. Jensen (2025), ”Une nouvelle « génération » de droits de l'homme?  Les droits et libertés numériques vus dans une perspective historique et critique », Collection « Droit et Société », edited by Pauline Türk. 
Steven L. B. Jensen (2023), 'Writing Political Histories of International Human Rights Law' in Bård A. Andreassen, Research Handbook on the Politics of Human Rights Law, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, p. 61-78. 
Steven L. B. Jensen & Charles Walton (2022), “Not Second Generation Rights: Rethinking Economic and Social Rights History, in Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History, ed. by Steven L. B. Jensen and Charles Walton. Cambridge University Press, p. 1-25. 
Steven L. B. Jensen (2021), ''Human Rights Against Human Arbitrariness': Pandemics in a Human Rights Historical Perspective' in Covid-19 and Human Rights, ed. by Morten Kjærum, Martha F. Davis and Amanda Lyons, New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 3-18. 
Steven L. B. Jensen (2020), “’From this era of passionate self-discovery’: Norman Manley, Human Rights and the End of Colonial Rule in Jamaica”, in Decolonization, Self-Determination and the Birth of Global Human Rights Politics, ed. by Roland Burke, Marco Duranti and Dirk Moses, Cambridge University Press, p. 236-261. 
Steven L. B. Jensen (2019), 'Inequality and Post-war International Organisation: Discrimination, the World Social Situation and the United Nations, 1948-1957' in Jensen, Steven L. B. and C.O. Christiansen (eds.), Histories of Global Inequality: New Perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 131-155.  
Steven L. B. Jensen (2016). The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization and the Reconstruction of Global Values. Cambridge University Press. 
Steven L. B. Jensen (2016), “The Politics of Meaning: The 1975 Helsinki Final Act and the Legacy of UN Human Rights Diplomacy”, The Long 1970s. New Perspectives on the Epoch-Making Decade, ed by. Poul Villaume et al. Routledge. London.