On 2 July 2026, FAU CHREN hosted the workshop “The Interdisciplinarity of Business and Human Rights: Curse, Blessing, or Opportunity?” with Prof. Dr. Harry Van Buren in the lecture hall at Andreij-Sacharow-Platz 1 in Nuremberg. The event brought together PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers and faculty from law, management and related disciplines to explore how genuinely interdisciplinary approaches can move the Business and Human Rights (BHR) field beyond its current multi-disciplinary focus.

Prof. Dr. Harry Van Buren, Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Tennessee, drew on his work on human rights, stakeholder theory and the moral foundations of the firm to show how normative theory and management practice can be more closely linked in BHR research. Commenting from a management and ethics perspective, he encouraged participants to reflect on how combining different disciplinary lenses can generate new insights for their own projects.

The workshop was opened and accompanied by Prof. Robert Phillips from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, who contributed further perspectives on stakeholder theory and responsible business practice in an interdisciplinary research context. Together, Van Buren and Phillips fostered an intensive dialogue across disciplinary boundaries, highlighting both the challenges and the opportunities that arise when legal studies, management and other fields systematically engage with one another in Business and Human Rights.

On Thursday, June 11, 2026, FAU CHREN hosted an evening of expert dialogue on human rights due diligence (HRDD), featuring a keynote lecture by leading scholar Dr. Sanchita Banerjee Saxena, followed by a dynamic panel discussion bringing together voices from academia, business, and civil society.

About the Event

Held at the Lecture Hall on the Fourth Floor of FAU CHREN, Andreij-Sacharow-Platz 1, Nürnberg, the event ran from 18:00 to 20:00 and was accessible both in-person and online, welcoming a broad audience of researchers, practitioners, students, and interested members of the public.

Keynote Lecture

The evening opened with a keynote address by Dr. Sanchita Banerjee Saxena, Academic Fellow at the UC Berkeley Center for Law and Business. Drawing on her extensive research in HRDD frameworks, stakeholder engagement, and Global South perspectives, Dr. Saxena set the stage for a critical conversation on how businesses can move beyond compliance toward genuinely rights-respecting conduct.

Panel Discussion

Following the keynote, a distinguished panel explored the practical realities and future directions of HRDD, featuring:

• Competence Centre for Human Rights Due Diligence — offering expertise on regulatory frameworks and implementation standards
• Dr. Rubana Huq — Former President of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, bringing a pivotal rightsholder and industry perspective from one of the world’s most scrutinised supply chains

The discussion illuminated the tensions and opportunities at the intersection of corporate practice, legal obligation, and the lived experiences of workers and communities in global supply chains.

On Wednesday, June 10, 2026, the FAU Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU CHREN) hosted an intimate, practice-oriented half-day workshop facilitated by Dr. Sanchita Banerjee Saxena, bringing together researchers and practitioners to explore how voices from the Global South can be meaningfully centred in human rights due diligence (HRDD).

About the Workshop

Held at the Lecture Hall on the Fourth Floor of FAU CHREN, Andreij-Sacharow-Platz 1, Nürnberg, the workshop ran from 12:30 to 17:30, with tea breaks woven into the programme. Limited to a maximum of 20 participants, the session offered an intentionally small and collaborative setting, fostering open exchange and in-depth discussion.

Key Themes

Drawing on Dr. Saxena’s extensive research, the workshop addressed:

• Practical methodologies for stakeholder engagement in HRDD contexts
• Grievance mechanisms and how they can be designed to be inclusive and effective
• Equitable partnerships between institutions from the Global North and Global South
• Collaborative research approaches that bridge academic inquiry and real-world practice

Participant Presentations

A highlight of the session was the opportunity for 2–3 participants to present their own ongoing research on HRDD-related topics and receive structured feedback from Dr. Saxena and fellow attendees — making the workshop not only a learning space, but also a platform for emerging scholarship.

About the Facilitator

Dr. Sanchita Banerjee Saxena is a renowned expert in human rights, stakeholder engagement, and Global South perspectives on corporate accountability. Her work bridges academic research and policy practice, with a particular focus on ensuring that HRDD frameworks are grounded in the lived experiences of affected communities.

29 September 2025 · 18:30–20:00 CET · Lecture Hall, 4th floor, Andreij-Sacharow-Platz 1, 90403 Nürnberg · On-site and streamed online

The FAU Chair of International Business, Society and Sustainability and the FAU Center for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg (CHREN) hosted a public roundtable on Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence (HREDD): New Trends Around the Globe.

In recent years, the European Union has advanced regulations aimed at reducing human rights and environmental impacts in global supply chains. Yet geopolitical tensions and competitiveness concerns have led to delays and dilutions in the implementation of legislation such as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). While policy debates in Europe have been studied extensively, far less attention has been paid to discussions elsewhere — particularly in the Global South — even though the legitimacy and effectiveness of new rules for transnational business depend on how they are received, interpreted, and implemented worldwide.

To address these gaps, the roundtable brought together experts from Brazil, China, France, Germany/Kenya, and Indonesia. The discussion examined the state of human rights and environmental governance in global supply chains across regions, the challenges and opportunities of new HREDD rules, and bottom-up and alternative governance approaches that can foster just sustainability.

Speakers

• Thales Cavalcanti – Federal Prosecutor, Head of the Human Rights and Business Working Group, Brazilian Federal Prosecution Service (MPF), Brazil
• Caroline Lichuma, Ph.D – Postdoctoral Researcher, CHREN/FAU
• Anaïs Tobalagba, Ph.D – Senior Legal Advisor, Beyond Human Rights Compliance
• Xu Kang – Doctoral Candidate, International Doctoral Programme on Business & Human Rights (IDP) & CHREN/FAU
• Kania Mezariani Guzaimi – Doctoral Candidate, International Doctoral Programme on Business & Human Rights (IDP) & CHREN/FAU

Convenors: Prof. Dr. Almut Schilling-Vacaflor and Bruna Singh (FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg)

Roundtable brochure: PDF

30 September – 2 October 2025 · FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg

The International Doctorate Programme (IDP) on Business and Human Rights hosted the closing conference of its first cohort at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. Marking the conclusion of the programme’s first four years, the event brought together around 60 participants, including all IDP doctoral researchers, FAU professors, and human rights and sustainability scholars from FAU, alongside 20 external guests from academia, industry, and civil society.

What made the conference distinctive was that it was built and organised entirely by the IDP doctoral researchers themselves, shaping the programme in ways that reflected their own interests and expertise. Discussions centred on four thematic clusters drawn from current debates in business and human rights and tailored to the IDP research programme: BHR in Conflicting Environments; BHR & Transforming Norms; BHR & Emerging Technologies; and BHR & the Climate Crisis.

The agenda featured panels, workshops, paper sessions, performances, and more — all designed by the IDP doctoral researchers and led by scholars and practitioners in the field — along with ample opportunity for exchange and networking. Under the title „Shaping the Future of Business and Human Rights,“ the conference set out both to reflect on past research and to chart new directions for the field.

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A few notes: I shifted everything to past tense and folded the four thematic clusters into a sentence rather than a numbered list, since it reads more smoothly in a recap (happy to restore the list if you’d prefer it to stand out). Your source text cut off at „chart new directions for the“ — I completed it as „the field,“ which seemed the natural ending, but do check that matches your intended close.

Want me to add an opening line on how the conference went or a note on outcomes?field—bringing together diverse perspectives to shape the future of business and human rights scholarship.

You can find the full agenda of the conference here: PDF

The Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, in collaboration with the International Nuremberg Principles Academy and the City of Nuremberg, organized the International Conference on “Business and Human Rights Governance Challenges in Times of Complexity and Crisis” from September 24-26, 2023. Approximately 100 participants from around the world, including professors, representatives from civil society and business sectors, as well as PhD and Master students from FAU and other international universities, actively participated in this three-day conference. A significant number of participants attended virtually, given that all the sessions were streamed online.

After the Nuremberg International Human Rights Award Ceremony and the Nuremberg Peace Table (Nürnberger Friedenstafel) on Sunday, September 24, 2023, the conference commenced in Courtroom 600 of the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. Professor Christoph Safferling, the Director of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy, opened the conference with a welcome speech, followed by a keynote address delivered by Professor Andrew Clapham from the Geneva Graduate Institute.

On Monday, September 25, 2023, the conference continued in the Heilig-Geist-Saal with welcome and opening speeches by the Lord Mayor of Nuremberg, Marcus König, and the President of FAU, Joachim Hornegger. It proceeded with panel discussions centered on rethinking corporate purposes, stakeholder participation and rights-holders claim, and the responsibilities of corporations. The day concluded with an input from the 2023 Nuremberg International Human Rights Awardee, Malcolm Bidali.

On Tuesday, September 26, 2023, the final day of the conference started with a keynote delivered by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development, Professor Surya Deva, highlighting the role of businesses in realizing the right to development. This was followed by panels discussing topics such as migration and labor, climate justice, and corporate complicity in international crimes. The conference ended with Professor Heiner Bielefeldt’s closing remark. It summarizes the primary outcomes of the preceding discussions and leaves the audience with reflective thoughts, emphasizing the significance of hope and simplicity in times of complexity and crisis.

You can find the conference program and a list of the speakers and their affiliations here.

On March 9 – 10, 2023, some members of the International Doctorate Programme “Business and Human Rights: Governance Challenges in a Complex World (IDP) traveled to Madrid to attend and co-organize the workshop on “Partnerships in Practice” as part of the “Partnerships Orchestrating Sustainability Transformations (POST) project. POST is a collaboration initiative between FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS), and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), funded by EELISA European University. The POST agenda supports the UN SDG 17 on Partnerships for Goals and aims to understand cross-sector partnerships for sustainability transformations through exploring its meaning, dimensions, context, and nature in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa through interdisciplinary research, exchange, and collaboration. POST was an initiative of the representatives from the IDP at FAU: Chau Bui, Loren Bustos, Kania Guzaimi, Shuvra Dey, Supriya Singh, and Xu Kang.

After successfully conducting the first POST workshop on “Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Searching for Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives” last January 2023 hosted by SNS in Florence, the Madrid workshop hosted by ItdUPM was conceptualized to further support and build upon the fundamental understandings of Partnership by adopting a practical and context-sensitive approach. Day 1 kick-started with a meeting with the EELISA Executive Director, Sofia d’ Aguiar. In the afternoon, the hybrid session on “Partnerships in context: an approach to transformation” opened an important discussion on Partnership with guest speakers Dr. Leda Stott (European Commission), Prof. Markus Krajewski (FAU), and Prof. Markus Beckmann (FAU). This is then followed by a workshop on “Partnership’s lifecycle” facilitated by partnership experts, Leda Stott and Javier Mazorra. The workshop was devoted to unfolding the concept of “Partnership’s lifecycle,” a well-known framework in the frontier between practice and academia. On Day 2, the session opened with a roundtable on “Partnerships between theory and practice” and invited a panel with diverse and interesting case studies. The aim of this roundtable was to reach out, exchange experiences around a selection of real cases, and enlarge our academic network. Two doctoral researchers from the IDP were also part of that dynamic panel; Bruna Singh presented on the topic titled “Multi Stakeholder Partnerships: A Valuable Tool for Enhancing Leverage in Business and Human Rights,” and Nelson Okeyo presented on “ICT Partnerships in Africa, Legitimacy and The Way Forward.”

From October 21 – 22, 2022

The guiding theme of the workshop is to understand climate change as it resides in different social, economic and political settings.

Fast Facts:

• Travel expenses will be covered
• Selected papers will be published

IDP Researchers Mirka Fries, Jakob Nehls, Marie Sophie Keller, and Eklavya Vasudev, together with Siddharth Peter De Souza, post doctoral researcher from Tilburg University, organized an interdisciplinary workshop on climate justice on the 22nd and 23rd of October 2022. At the workshop, which was divided into five main panels, 23 participants from all over the world presented papers from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The workshop offered critical insights and scholarly contributions, setting the tone for the group’s overarching goal of hosting a public on-site conference, planned for May, and publishing an interdisciplinary collection of scholarly literature addressing climate justice from a nuanced, comparative perspective.

Workshop format

The main objective of the workshop was to understand and conceptualize climate justice from diverse geographical, disciplinary as well as thematic perspectives. The program consisted of five interlinked panels investigating the role of courts, economic and social rights, gender, technology and data, and agriculture in the context of climate justice. In advance to the virtual workshop, each participant submitted a short article on topics of their choice within the ambit of the five themes, which served as a basis for fruitful discussions among the panelists.

In order to ensure deep engagement with the content, a peer presentation method (see Institute for Global Law & Policy at Harvard Law School) was used. This proved very successful, as it allowed to combine academic rigor with passionate debates. Each panelist took away constructive feedback and also uncovered hidden insights. In the coming months, the panelists will develop their papers into elaborate scientific articles that will form the core of the planned publication.

Panel discussions

The panel on courts focused on the questions, how structural transformations in the pursuit of climate justice can be fostered by judicial processes. The panelists discussed current legal issues related to space, time, and urgency in climate litigation. They covered approaches ranging from human rights law to investment law as well as regional best practices from India and Brazil.

The panel on economic and social rights contrasted different understandings of human rights in general and economic, social and cultural rights in particular in the Global North and South. By looking through the lens of concepts like environmental racism or corporate occupation from both regional and global perspectives, the need for a decolonized reading of rights was emphasized.

The gender panel focused on gender and other intersecting social categories and their impact on climate justice. The discussion focused i.a. on how “othering” hinders the struggle for climate justice. As a holistic response, the panelists pointed to Latin American communitarian feminism, which conceives time, space and body as interlinked concepts and therewith serves as a tool to question the individualistic nature of dominant discourses. They further discussed the role of indigenous knowledge and women’s engagement as keys to environmental and climate protection.

The technology panel discussed the role of technology, data policy, and respective regulatory approaches in climate justice. The panelists generally appraised the role of technology and data in creating solutions to climate justice. However, all discussants critically commented on narratives framing the latter as panaceas, as it risks ignoring their role in the manifestation and reinforcement of inequalities.

In the agriculture panel, the discussions turned on the various actors in this field, and analyzed their vulnerability and responsibility in the struggle for climate justice. Special attention was put on the role of the law, its inherent biases and the potentials and pitfalls contained in different legal systems. As transnational agricultural corporations continue to increase their profits also in the face of the climate crisis, the conventional business and human rights approach was critically evaluated.

Next steps and thanks

The discussions revealed obvious and less obvious overlaps and interconnections between all five topics. The focus now is on filling remaining gaps, further developing the papers and coalescing the intersecting projects into one consolidated output. Panelists will continue the virtual discussion before meeting for the follow-up conference on site in Nuremberg from May 8-11, 2023. The organizers thank all participants for their valuable contributions as well as all colleagues and professors who helped organize the workshop.

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The Partnerships Orchestrating Sustainability Transformations (POST) is a project of a team from the EELISA in collaboration with Scuola Normale Superiore Florence and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid dedicated to understanding cross-sector partnerships for sustainability transformations through exploring its meaning, dimensions, context, and nature.
POST will organize 3 distinct activities between January 2023 – April 2023:
Workshop 1, Roundtable & Research visit (Hybrid; Led by Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence)
Workshop 2 & Research visit (Hybrid; Led by Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Madrid)
Spring School (in-person; Led by FAU in Nürnberg)
The first activity in Florence “Roundtable on Partnerships for sustainable development: searching for theoretical and methodological perspectives” was held on January 16, 2023, Monday at 15:00 – 18:00 on a hybrid format via MS Teams.
The roundtable aims to focus on how sustainability challenges and partnerships are politically and socially constructed and shaped in dominant discourses and practices. The outcome of the roundtable will be to outline some guiding theories and perspectives that could shed light onto research on partnerships and sustainable development. We highly encourage all interested participants to join us! For further information and registration, you can visit:
https://www.sns.it/it/evento/roundtable-partnerships-sustainable-development-searching-theoretical-and-methodological

On January 10, the International Doctoral Program in Business and Human Rights organized a workshop to discuss some of the group’s research projects in law. The workshop counted with the participation of Prof. Markus Krajewski and Prof. Patricia Wiater, and visiting professor Danielle Pamplona from the Pontific Catholic University of Paraná (Brazil). The researchers topics discussed were:

• Human Rights and Tech, from Sabrina Rau
• Leverage and Business & Human Rights, from Bruna Singh
• Climate Justice and Corporate Accountability, from Julia Stefanello (visiting researcher).

The FAU IDP Delegation attended the 11th United Nations Forum on Business & Human Rights in Geneva, from 28-30 November 2022.

UN Forum is the world’s largest annual gathering on business and human rights with more than 2,000 participants from government, business, community groups and civil society, law firms, investor organisations, UN bodies, national human rights institutions, trade unions, academia and the media.

Over three days, participants take part in 60+ panel discussions on topics that relate to the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (the United Nations „Protect, Respect and Remedy“ Framework), as well as current business-related human rights issues.

The Forum is the foremost event to network, share experiences and learn about the latest initiatives to promote corporate respect for human rights.

Find out more

Unternehmen vor Gericht? Im Namen der Menschenrechte!

Our Doctoral Researchers presented a short skit on Business and Human Rights during the Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften 2022 on 21st of May in Erlangen.

Please find detailed information here.

Special Focus: Business and Human Rights

13–16 September 2021

The Center for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg (CHREN), in cooperation with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), hosted the Third Summer School on Human Rights Law in Context. The focus area was business and human rights, covering topics such as human rights due diligence, corporate liability, and supply chain responsibility, alongside practical experiences from litigation and companies.

Speakers included, among others, Miriam Saage-Maaß, Markus Krajewski, Claire Bright, Richard Meeran, Christian Schliemann, Barbara Lamprecht, and Markus Löning.

The programme is available here.

Tuesdays, 6:30–8:00 p.m. · B6 BISSANTZ Hörsaal, Nuremberg

Our lecture series on Business and Human Rights was held on Tuesday evenings at the B6 BISSANTZ Hörsaal in Nuremberg. Participation was open and free of charge, with no prior registration required.

Recorded lectures are available here.

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Lamprecht: „Company Perspectives on Business and Human Rights“

Elke Schüßler: „Business and Human Rights – A New Logic for Corporate Responsibility?“

Markus Löning: „Business and Human Rights – A practical perspective“

Grazyna Baranowska: „Human Rights of Migrants: Missing Migrants in Europe and the Role of Businesses“