Research Team
Dr kate Macdonald
Dr Kate Macdonald is the co-coordinator of the project and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research examines emerging systems of global economic governance, with a particular focus on social, labour and human rights governance arrangements and their implications for developing countries. Before taking up her current job in Melbourne she held positions at London School of Economics, Australian National University and Oxford University. She has carried out research and consultancy work for a range of development and human rights organisations, including ActionAid Australia, Amnesty International and the UK ’s Corporate Responsibility Coalition.
Dr Shelley Marshall
Shelley is the co-coordinator of the project. Her research focuses primarily on business and human rights and labour law and development. She has undertaken empirical studies of business impact on human rights in a diverse range of countries, including Bulgaria, India, Indonesia, Australia and Cambodia, and has published widely based on her findings. Her high standing as a scholar has been recognised through the award a number of large multi-country grants, and she has undertaken collaborations with scholars from Cambridge University, Harvard University, Melbourne University and RMIT. Dr Marshall’s long term partnerships with the technical arm of the International Labour Organisation, Oxfam Australia and CORE UK has enabled her to produce research of a highly applied nature, which has had a strong policy influence and provided meaningful lessons for business and other relevant organisations.
Dr Samantha Balaton-chrimes
Dr Samantha Balaton-Chrimes is a Lecturer in International Studies at Deakin University. Her research is concerned with enduring political questions about how difference is negotiated in contexts of power asymmetries. Her work is interdisciplinary in nature, engaging political theory, anthropology and development studies. Her most recent research focuses on international development and global north/south relationships as they play out ‘on the ground’, particularly through practices of participation, consultation, consent-giving and complaint-making as tools for the management of disagreement over development. She has conducted research in Kenya, India and Indonesia, and has published widely on various practices through which minority groups make rights claims.
MAY MILLER-DAWKINS
May is a researcher and advocate working to increase the accountability and transparency of governments and corporations. She was the head of research at Oxfam Australia, where she first worked with the team on the conception of this project. She was research director at Corelab, an interdisciplinary social change consultancy based in New York where she worked with a range of social movements, international NGOs, research institutes and UN agencies on research and advocacy strategy. She is currently the Director, Governance and Transparency at The B Team.
Sarah Rennie
Sarah Rennie is an Investigator on this project and a researcher at the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne. Sarah is presently working as a litigation and dispute resolution lawyer and pro bono coordinator at the Melbourne office of an international law firm. Sarah's research is focused on corporate accountability in global manufacturing and extractives sectors. Previously, Sarah worked in the advocacy team at Oxfam Australia with a strong focus on corporate accountability and employment rights. During that time Sarah worked closely with trade unions and civil society organisations in Indonesia and throughout Asia. Sarah has also lived and worked in Indonesia for many years, speaks fluent Indonesian and was previously employed as a South-East Asia legal researcher at the Asian Law Centre. As a lawyer, Sarah has experience working for both corporate and community clients, ranging from large resource companies to various human rights and indigenous organisations. She has also worked with traditional owners at the Central Land Council in Alice Springs through the Aurora internship program. In 2009 Sarah was awarded the Australian National University Medal and in 2015 Sarah received The Robert Craig Exhibition for Commercial Law in Asia at the University of Melbourne. Sarah has predominantly worked on the textile and clothing sector case studies and has contributed research to other Indonesia-based case studies.
Dr Tim Conor
Tim Connor is a Chief Investigator on this project and is a Senior Lecturer in Newcastle Law School at the University of Newcastle in Australia, teaching employment law and company law. His research focuses on the relationship between voluntary and state-sanctioned forms of governance, particularly the extent to which participation by transnational corporations in multi-stakeholder initiatives is enhancing respect for freedom of association and other international labour standards. From 1995 until 2010 he worked for Oxfam Australia, coordinating research and advocacy regarding workers’ rights in corporate supply chains. His work involved frequent trips to Indonesia, Thailand and other Asian countries to conduct field research and to consult with workers and company representatives. From 1995 until 2010 he also coordinated the NikeWatch campaign and other campaigns by Oxfam Australia targeting labour rights in the sportswear industry. Tim led the textile and clothing sector case studies.
Dr Annie Delaney
Annie Delaney is a Chief Investigator and Senior Lecturer in Management at RMIT in Australia. Her areas of interest include: campaigns and links to corporate accountability, informal employment, labour organising, and the intersection of race, gender and class. Annie has worked as a union and community organiser and campaigner. She has a long association with the FairWear campaign coordinating campaigns and organising activities with homeworkers in the garment industry, and is a participant in the international homeworkers movement Federation of Homeworkers Worldwide.
Prof Fiona Haines
Fiona Haines is Professor of Criminology in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne and Adjunct Professor at the Regulatory Institutions Network at ANU. Her research, which encompasses work on industrial disasters, grievances and multinational enterprises centres on white collar and corporate crime, globalisation and regulation. She is an internationally renowned expert in the area of regulation and compliance with published work in the area ranging from occupational health & safety and financial fraud to the impact of criminalisation of cartel conduct and most recently the challenges for regulation in the transformation of the National Electricity Market with the introduction of household solar PV and the capacity of new governance to resolve issues of human rights violations associated with the activities of multinational corporations. Her recent books include The Paradox of Regulation: what regulation can achieve and what it cannot (Edward Elgar, 2011) and Regulatory Transformations: Rethinking Economy Society Interactions, (Hart Publishing), 2015, co-edited with Bettina Lange and Dania Thomas. Her major current research projects include an analysis of how to hold multinational corporations accountable for human right's abuse, the social impact of coals seam gas exploration and rethinking regulation in an ecologically constrained world.
Prof. Sheldon Leader
Prof. Sheldon Leader is a graduate of Yale and Oxford Universities. He is professor of law and director of the Essex Business and Human Rights Project, based in the UK. He researches and teaches in the area of economic relations and human rights as well as legal theory. He has provided analysis of the human rights impacts of investment agreements for civil society and inter-governmental organizations. Among his publications are Human Rights on the Line, Amnesty International UK 2003 (with Andrea Schemberg), Global Project Finance, Human Rights, and Sustainable Development, Sheldon Leader, David Ong (eds.) Cambridge University Press. [forthcoming] and ‘Human Rights, Risks, and New Strategies for Global Investment’ 9 Journal of International Economic Law 657-705 (2006). He provided the content for the Human Rights Undertaking for the BTC pipeline, the first legally binding human rights commitment incorporated into an international investment contract.