Multi-Disciplinary Research

A note from the Research Director.

A deeper understanding of human rights and a rigorous exchange of ideas are central prerequisites to influence both practical human rights change and new approaches to policy. For that reason, research is at the core of our mandate. The Institute has a long history of carrying out cutting-edge and policy-oriented research and analysis.

As a research institute, we aim to produce relevant and constructive perspectives on current human rights issues, while at the same time meeting the highest academic standards. We carry out inter-disciplinary research across the four thematic areas as well as on cross-cutting issues relating to human rights methods and theory.

In addition to research carried out by staff, we work closely with academic partners around the world. We also coordinate the Lund Human Rights Research Hub, which represents more than 70 researchers working on human rights issues across a wide range of disciplines.

Radu Mares

Radu Mares

Research Director, Associate Professor, Leader of Business and Human Rights Thematic Area

Phone: + 46 46 222 12 43
E-mail: radu.mares@rwi.lu.se

Radu has a background in human rights law, specializing in the business and human rights area, with a focus on regulatory and compliance issues raised by multinational enterprises in developing countries. His main research interest is the protection of human rights through economic relations. Some questions that have engaged Radu for a long time are:

  • How does the international human rights system accommodate and interact with the fragmented, overlapping and dynamic landscape of responsible business conduct?
  • How does the shift from corporate voluntarism to hard law happen and how do companies affect the emergence, institutionalization, and diffusion of norms of social responsibility?
  • Can complex regulatory regimes that reject the ‘command-and-control’ approach deliver on their promise to achieve corporate compliance and respect for human rights?

Radu’s research draws on economic law, corporate governance, risk management, regulatory pluralism and global governance. He has also conducted field work in mining areas in Ghana and Peru. His current focus is on the EU green transition, and the impacts of this legislative framework on human rights and environmental protection globally through EU value chains.

Radu is an Associate Professor at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights, the director of the Research and Education Department, and the thematic leader for the Business and Human Rights area at RWI. He is a Doctor of Law (PhD) and a Docent in the Faculty of Law at Lund University. Radu contributes to RWI capacity-strengthening programs for academics, businesses and/or governmental actors in China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Estonia and Belarus, and Asia region. Since 2007 he has taught and supervised at Lund University’s Faculty of Law and more recently at the Economics Faculty. Radu values opportunities to collaborate with colleagues from other disciplines, to explore new linkages between economics and human rights, in education, research, and outreach.

For further updates on his research, please refer to his Research profile:

https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/radu-mares 

 

Publications

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Research Opportunities

We regularly welcome guest scholars in Lund to be part of the dynamic human rights research environment. Together with the Law Faculty at Lund University, the Institute hosts a Fulbright-Lund University Chair in Public International Law.

Our Human Rights Library

The libary at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, founded in 1984, is Sweden's most extensive human rights libraries and one of Europe's leading human rights libraries.

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