Experienced strategist will strengthen human rights & business in the curriculum at leading Scottish university

2 May 2018

Strategic Adviser at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, Claire Methven O’Brien, has been appointed as honorary lecturer to further develop and implement human rights and business strategies at The University of St. Andrews School of Management.

Claire Methven O’Brien will be working with professor John Ferguson, exploring how National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights may serve as a mechanism for strengthening business governance and social accountability and therefor furthering the impact of human rights and business in Europe.

Claire Methven O’Brien's appointment will develop further collaborative activity with colleagues as well as the Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research.

One of the main focuses will be to explore how companies are implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and UN Sustainable Development Goals and interdependencies between these. Another will be to develop better understandings of the role and impacts of company, supply chain and industry-level measures to promote corporate human rights due diligence and human rights reporting levels. In addition,she will collaborate with the school in strengthening the delivery of business and human rights in the management curriculum to help organise the best education for the future human rights and business managers in Europe.

Experienced human rights and business strategist

Claire Methven O’Brien isStrategic Adviser at theDanish Institute for Human Rights with expertise in business and human rights.She has extensive international experience of designing and delivering technical assistance on human rights and business to companies, public actors and civil society.

She holds a PhD in Law from the European University Institute, Florence and publishes and teaches on a range of human rights and business topics. She is also a Fellow at the International Law Department of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and she welcomes this new collaboration with the University of St. Andrews School of Management.