Beatriz Albuquerque is a lawyer at the law firm Vieira de Almeida & Associados, where she has been working in the areas of life sciences and social economy. She has recently passed her bar exam from the Portuguese Bar Association. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law from the Faculty of Law – School of Lisbon of the Portuguese Catholic University. She has completed the LL.M. Law in a European and Global Context at Católica Global School of Law, as well as the LL.M. in Transnational Law at King’s College London. At King’s College, she wrote a Master thesis on ‘Human Rights Due Diligence – Where do we go from here? The case of the garment sector’. An adapted version of her thesis has been published in the book ‘Judicial Power in a Globalized World’ (Springer, 2019). Her main field of interest is Business and Human Rights.  

Filipa Cansado Carvalho is an independent dispute resolution practitioner based in Lisbon. Filipa works in international dispute resolution since 2000 and has acted in around 50 arbitrations. As counsel, Filipa has advised clients in complex cases conducted in English, French and Portuguese under major international arbitration rules (e.g. ICC, LCIA, ICSID and OHADA) in different seats (including Abidjan, Luanda and Maputo) and subject to different substantive laws. Filipa has acted for and against public entities and in cases covering a wide variety of industries/topics including construction, infrastructure, food and beverage, media and advertising, distribution, pharmaceutical patents, cement, mergers & acquisitions and joint-venture disputes. In some of these cases, business and human rights topics were discussed. As arbitrator, Filipa has acted in ad hoc and institutional proceedings (including pursuant to the ICC and the Corte de Arbitraje de Madrid’s rules), in both domestic and international cases (seated in Madrid and São […]

  Céline da Graça Pires is a business and human rights specialist at Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), a global non-profit organization that supports companies implementing the UN Guiding Principles and sustainable business strategies. Céline supports BSR’s consulting services with a focus on human rights of vulnerable groups including Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, stakeholders engagement, human rights impact assessments in Europe and the LATAM region and implementation of mitigation plans.

Lécia Vicente is the Henry Plauché Dart Endowed Assistant Professor of Law at Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center. She teaches business law, comparative law, and civil law. Before joining LSU Law, she was an affiliate with the Fordham Corporate Law Center at Fordham University School of Law.  She earned her Ph.D. and Master of Laws in Comparative, European and International Laws from the European University Institute and her BA in Law from the Catholic University of Portugal. She carried on her postdoctoral training as a postdoctoral research associate and lecturer at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to that, Professor Vicente was a practicing lawyer at international law firms. She worked on corporate, contract, real estate, and civil procedure laws of Portugal and other Lusophone countries such as Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil. She held visiting research positions at the Commercial […]

  Grace Ballor is the Harvard-Newcomen Fellow at Harvard Business School and incoming Assistant Professor of Economic History at Bocconi University. Her research examines the historical intersections of global capitalism and European integration. Recent publications include an edited multidisciplinary study of multinational firms and the politics of international trade (Business and Politics 2020) and an analysis of transatlantic investment flows in the 1970s (Relations Internationales 2019). Among other projects on trade relations and economic governance, she is currently at work on a monograph reconstructing the history of the Single European Market.    Grace earned a PhD in History from the University of California, Los Angeles and has held research fellowships at the European University Institute and Graduate Institute, Geneva. 

Dr Samentha Goethals is Assistant Professor in Human Rights and Business at SKEMA Business School. She holds a PhD in Politics from Oxford Brookes University. She has developed an interdisciplinary research profile combining perspectives from socio-legal, global governance and organization studies that reflect her experience in both policy and advocacy work and academic research in the field of Business and Human Rights. Her research focuses on the meaning and translation of human rights in business organizations, the responsibility of business in contexts of forced migration including regarding the protection and integration of refugees, and human rights education in business schools. She has worked with several British Non-Governmental Organizations in the field of Business and Human Rights and co-authored several policy reports based on fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Turkey and Jordan. Her recent article ‘Migrant Workers’ ‘Rights-Talk’ in the British Hospitality Sector’ was awarded the 2019 Best Paper […]

  Dr. Carmen Márquez-Carrasco is Full Professor of  Public International Law and International Relations at the University of Sevilla (Spain), where she teaches the general course of  Public International Law, European Union Law and International Human Rights Law and International Organizations. With a particular focus on international protection of human rights, her main research  areas are Business and Human Rights, International Peace and Security, incl. EU CSDP, International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law, International Criminal Law and Universal Jurisdiction. Since 2005 Carmen Márquez-Carrasco served as Programme Director of the European Master´s Degree in Human Rights and Democratization  at EIUC (Venice, Italy) and has held the positions of Chairperson (2007-2013) and Vice-President and President ad interim of the EIUC Board (2015-2016). She was member of the Academic Committee that drafted the Spanish Nation Action Plan on Business and Human Rights (under the coordination of the Human Rights Office of the Spanish Ministry […]

  Nicolas Bueno is Postdoctoral Researcher in International Human Rights Law and International Economic Law at the University of Zurich and Senior Lecturer in International Law at the Università de la Svizzera Italiana. In his research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, he addresses the limits of the Business and Human Rights approach in a global competitive economy. His research has been published in international journals, such as the International & Comparative Law Quarterly, the International Journal of Human Rights, the International Labour Review and International Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations. His recent publications in Business and Human Rights include ‘Implementing Human Rights Due Diligence through Corporate Civil Liability’ with Professor Bright, ‘Multinational Enterprises and Labour Rights’ and ‘The Swiss Popular Initiative on Responsible Business’. Prior to his research, Dr. Bueno conducted strategic litigation in Business and Human Rights at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin.

  Humberto Cantú Rivera (Ph.D., Université Panthéon-Assas Paris II) is Professor at the School of Law and Social Sciences of the University of Monterrey, in Mexico, where he also directs its Human Rights and Business Institute. He is the Expert Adviser to the Delegation of Mexico before the Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights at the UN since 2015, and in the development of Mexico’s national programme on business and human rights. His experience also includes participating as an expert in the consultations of the four phases of the Access to Remedy Project of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights since 2015; as an Adviser to the Special Rapporteur on Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for the preparation of the report on Business and Human Rights: Inter-American Standards; in […]

  Marta Bordignon, Ph.D. in International Law from University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (Italy), with a thesis on the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights through National Action Plans in Italy, Spain and the UK. She is co-founding President at the association Human Rights International Corner (HRIC) since May 2018 and co-director of the “Business and Human Rights” Summer School. Currently, Dr. Bordignon is Adjunct Professor of Contemporary Politics of Europe, Politics of the Global Economy and Legal Environment of Business at Temple University, Rome Campus. She has been appointed as Human Rights Expert of the Inter-ministerial Committee for Human Rights in July 2020. She authored several papers and book’s chapters about the implementation at national level of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, corporate social responsibility, human rights due diligence, indigenous people rights and human trafficking and modern slavery.