Department of Management, Society and Communication

Core expertise
My research and teaching focus on sustainability and responsible business conduct (RBC) with a particular emphasis on social issues, especially climate change mitigation;  business responsibilities for human rights; and sustainable finance. Within these topics my research and expertise focus on, i.a.,

• risk-based due diligence, corporate sustainability due diligence and and human rights due diligence and its elements, in particular meaningful stakeholder engagement with and for affected stakeholders, and access to substantive remedy
• multi-stakeholder regulation and 'smart' regulation for sustainability;
• just and fair transitions/socially responsible climate change mitigation, and tensions between technical and social aspects of the transition to low-GHG economies;
• non-financial reporting as a driver for organizational change for responsible business conduct;
• identifying SDG opportunities through insights from risk-based due diligence;
• institutional investors and responsible business conduct;
• legislative developments on mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence
• the role of National Contact Points under OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
• RBC in an Arctic setting;
• Alternative conflict resolution and RBC

I approach these issues from the perspective of public governance and public-private regulation, exploring how public and private organizations do or can work together to address global concerns related to sustainable human development and how public-private collaboration add to and result from a transnationalization of sustainability governance and diverse forms of soft and hard law and guidance as well as specific processes, in particular risk-based due diligence.

With a background in international and public law and a socio-legal leaning, I favour a pragmatic approach over a dogmatic approach to legal issues and apply methods and theories from the social sciences wide sense to understand normative developments and organizational integration.

My research and teaching are frequently inspired by a quest to deliver insights on theoretical and practical implementation perspectives for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises for Responsible Business Conduct; the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the UN ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework, the Global Compact and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the EU Green Deal.

Research
My research explores the topics noted above, supported by research projects within a series of specific issues:

- ‘Frontiers of natural resource and sustainability governance for a just energy transition’. Carlsberg Semper Ardens Accomplish grant (collaborative research project). DKK 9,996,438 awarded by the Carlsberg Foundation (project period 1 April 2024-31 March 2029). https://frontiers.cbs.dk/

The FRONTIERS project explores frontiers along two dimensions: frontiers of sustainability governance; and frontiers for natural resource use and extraction for the green transition – with an emphasis on minerals, risk-based due diligence, and sustainable finance. Working across several aspects of social science and their application in a technical and natural science context, we simultaneously push the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research frontier for a comprehensively sustainable transition towards low-carbon societies, thereby opening a third frontier. Field research will involve international negotiations under the International Seabed Authority (ISA), and land- and sea-based mining operations in diverse countries, tentatively Norway, Brazil, South Africa, Nauru, Papua New Guinea.

- Research on just transitions in the Arctic, including meaningful engagement with affected stakeholders
o    Towards a socially just transition in the Arctic: Exploring, theorizing and disseminating best practice in meaningful stakeholder engagement for communities’. Collaborative cross-Arctic project, funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Arctic Cooperation Programme (2021-2025)

o    ‘Arctic Academy for Sustainability: Creating Environmentally and Socially Responsible Sustainable Energy and Resource Development in the Arctic’, grant Euros 99,992 funded by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation. Four Academies, bringing together senior and junior scholars with various stakeholders affected by green energy project development, including rights-holders. Academy locations: Northern Finland/Rovaniemi and beyond (2022); British Columbia (2023); Newfoundland & Labrador (2024); Copenhagen (2025).

- Scientific information, policy making and implications for conduct at the national level – a comparison of IPCC information on climate change and WHO information on Covid-19. Adopting a systems theory angle, this comparative research explores the communicative aspects of scientific information on climate change and covid-19 for uptake among policy-makers at the national level and onward implications for change of conduct of public and private organisations and individuals. The objective is to identify communicative strategies that effectively transmit scientific information to policy-makers in order to generate change at the national level.

- Taking a comparative Global South and High North approach, I cultivate research and research networking on risk-based (corporate sustainability) due diligence in diverse sectoral and regional contexts. This work benefits from international research networks built through several Danish and Nordic funded scholarly collaboration projects that I was awarded since 2016. Involving colleagues and institutions from around the Globe, this enriches the research with knowledge, experience and partners from areas in the circum-polar High North to regions in the Global South, China as well as Europe and non-Arctic areas in the Nordic countries.

- Past research projects include the communicative and strategic evolution of the Business & Human Rights (BHR) regime, and sustainable forestry in East and South East Asia between law and the market (both funded by the Independent Danish Research Council).

In my research and networking I benefit from my previous work experience as an associate attorney in a law firm and as a civil servant in the Danish public administration, working with immigration issues under the Ministry of Justice and with human rights in development under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Danida.

Outreach and Networks (selected)

• member for public organisations of the Board of Ethical Trade Denmark
• member of the Board of the Danish Institute for Human Rights
• former member of the Danish National Contact Point (NCP) to the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (2012 - 2022)
• member of the Human Rights and SDG working groups under the Danish Global Compact Network
• deputy CBS representative to the University of the Arctic (UArctic)
• co-founder and chair of The BHRights Initiative for global interdisciplinary research and teaching on Business & Human Rights (established in March 2014 in the context of an Explanatory Workshop funded by the European Research Foundation)
• co-founder and chair of the University of the UArctic Thematic Network on Arctic Sustainable Resources and Social Responsibility (TN ASRSR)
• co-founder and chair of a global research network on socially responsible transitions initiated at CBS in December 2018: GREEN-SORT - Global Research and Engagement Network for Socially Responsible Transitions

Recent blog posts:

• https://blog.cbs.dk/cbds/?p=307: Why consultations on large projects matter to citizens and companies
• https://blog.cbs.dk/cbds/?p=343: Normative foundations for stakeholder involvement in environmental and social impact assessment

Languages (teaching and supervision): Danish (mother tongue), English