Chair of International Business, Society and Sustainability
The chair International Business, Society and Sustainability aims to advance the research frontier by addressing critical themes in interdisciplinary social science research related to sustainable development, business and human rights and environmental governance. Our teaching and research activities revolve around the question of how international business relationships could become more just and sustainable. For discussing this question, we draw on and contribute to different theoretical and empirical debates, such as on environmental justice, business and human rights, telecoupling, political ecology, corporate accountability and the sustainability governance of global supply chains. One of our current research interests are supply chain regulations from the demand-side, in particular human rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD) laws. We study the policy-making processes, institutional design, compliance of companies, accountability dynamics and consequences of HREDD regimes in diverse sites of production in the Global South.
In our analyses we use and combine diverse mixes of methods, among them semi-structured interviews, participatory observation, document analysis, surveys, discourse analysis, transdisciplinary methods and network analysis. The geographical focus of the chair’s activities is mainly set on Latin America and Europe, but we also carry out comparative research covering other places and regions. As sociopolitical processes and governance arrangements at different scales interact with and shape each other, our research focuses on different scales and cross-scalar linkages.
From November 3 to 5, Miguel Vargas Delgado, Director of the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CEJIS – Bolivia), visited Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU). His visit included a range of academic activities that promoted knowledge exchange and strengthened collaboration ...
Prof. Dr. Almut Schilling-Vacaflor ranks among the top 2% of the most cited researchers worldwide based on citations in 2024, and is one of six scientists from the School of Business, Economics and Society (FAU WiSo) who, according to the Stanford List 2025, have achieved this distinction.
Among...
On November 3 at 5:00 p.m., in room FG 2.024 (Findelgasse 7/9, Nuremberg), the roundtable titled “Territorios, sostenibilidad y soberanía: desafíos de América Latina en el nuevo orden global” will take place.
This academic event aims to analyze the challenges faced by Indigenous territories and ...
On September 29 and 30, we welcomed over 30 researchers from various countries to our International Workshop 2025 – Business, Human Rights, and the Environment in Andean Countries. The workshop was jointly organized by the Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nuremberg (CHREN) and the AD...
The registration period for all courses in the winter term 2025 starts on Tuesday, September 16 at 19:00 via StudOn. Here you can find a list of the courses we will offer: https://www.ibss.rw.fau.eu/teaching-and-supervision/
Hope to see many of you soon!
The exam review for International Politics will be on 15 October 10-1230 in the office of Almut Schilling-Vacaflor in Findelgasse, 2nd floor. There is a registration tool for this on StudOn; please come to the time slot you signed up for: https://www.studon.fau.de/studon/ilias.php?baseClass=ilreposi...
We’re happy to welcome Dr. Julia Stefanello Pires as a new postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of International Business, Society and Sustainability (IBSS) at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg.
Julia joins us with a strong interdisciplinary background in law, human rights, and sustainability, holding a PhD ...
