On 2 July 2026, FAU CHREN hosted Prof. Dr. Harry Van Buren (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) for the one-day workshop “The Interdisciplinarity of Business and Human Rights. Curse, Blessing, or Opportunity?” with PhDs, postdocs, and faculty on the interdisciplinary nature of Business and Human Rights (BHR).
Key Questions for the Workshop
Rather than presenting fixed conclusions, Van Buren structured the day around a set of questions for participants to work through together. Where does BHR currently stand, and what problems should it be trying to solve? What actually counts as a discipline, and is BHR itself one, or a field that draws on several? Does the distinction between multi, inter, and transdisciplinary research matter in practice, or is it a distinction without a difference?
Discussion touched on what BHR has achieved, including the UN Guiding Principles, France’s duty of vigilance law, and modern slavery acts, alongside where progress has stalled, such as cosmetic due diligence, tokenised rightsholders, and limited access to remedy. Van Buren used the largely separate tracks of legal and management scholarship in BHR to make the questions concrete.
Relevant Disciplinary Lenses
In an afternoon ideation exercise, small groups defined a BHR problem, identified two relevant disciplinary lenses, explained why each on its own would be insufficient, and sketched what an interdisciplinary research strategy might look like. The day closed with an open discussion of the practical challenges of interdisciplinary work, including siloed departments, disciplinary jargon, what counts in a discipline for evaluation, and writing for and finding reviewers from specific fields.
Thank you, Professor Van Buren, for a great day filled with rich discussions and thoughtful reflections!
This event is partly funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 3039 – 533607764.
