From sustainability in law to sustainability law
Working towards sustainability, which we see as a safe and just world, requires unprecedented collaboration across and beyond academia. The Research Group Sustainability Law builds on more than a decade of increasingly interdisciplinary work to integrate sustainability into regulation. Our emphasis in the Research Group continues to be on business, finance, and circular economy. Yet, sustainability law, as an emerging field, is for us broadly about identifying and analysing barriers to a safer and more just world, and identifying or co-creating possibilities for change. Working towards sustainability, to a safe and just world, includes mitigating climate change and biodiversity loss as core planetary boundaries, and promoting human rights, justice, peace, democracy and good governance as social foundations. Sustainability law is not limited to specific areas of law, and encompasses international laws and policies, regional laws and policies (including but not limited to the European Union), national and local approaches to regulation as well as the various standards, principles and guidelines relevant to the area. For us, sustainability is not only a matter of environmental or human rights law, or international law, or of sustainable finance, sustainable corporate governance, or circular economy. It is all of this and much more.
With the conference ‘Sustainability Law: Law's Response to the Convergence of Crises’, we aim to firmly establish sustainability law as a transformative and interdisciplinary field of law, with implications for research, teaching, and communication. The Research Group Sustainability Law, hosted by the Faculty of Law at the University of Oslo, is from June 2025 also a part of the University’s new Centre for Global Sustainability. Our Sustainability Law conference is therefore also a contribution to the Centre’s aim of connecting scholars across disciplines with the aim of contributing to sustainability.
Sustainability law can contribute to overcoming the fragmentation, siloed thinking and path-dependent perpetuation of inequalities that hinder coherent policy-making and regulatory responses to the unsafe and unjust conditions of our time. The conference aims at fostering a broad, normative approach, one that helps identify and analyse regulatory responses to fundamental sustainability challenges through interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. We are grounded in a common understanding of the need for justice and ecological integrity, and we call for critical reflections on Europe’s colonial legacy and its ongoing impact on global inequalities.
Sustainability as an overarching global societal goal, with its inherent requirement for a fundamental transformation, can break through established constraints of how to think about law – and how to regulate. It is easy to say that law has failed; with its silo-thinking, path-dependency and perpetuation of inequality. And yet, law has potential to redeem itself – and sustainability law can facilitate analyses that contribute to realising law’s potential.
We welcome contributions from scholars across disciplines
We invite scholars from around the world to respond to this call. We especially encourage scholars from low-income countries, of diverse backgrounds and in all levels of academia, including PhD candidates, to submit an abstract.
Issues which we will wish to see discussed (separately or together) include, but are not limited to:
- Conceptual and theoretical developments of sustainability and law, interrogating mainstream and heterogenic concepts and theories
- Critical perspectives, such as Indigenous, feminist, and postcolonial perspectives on sustainability and law
- Governance, power dynamics and justice in sustainability transitions
- Regulating for sustainability on international, regional, national and local levels, across all areas of societies, governance, and economies
- Comparative, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to regulatory analysis
- Knowledge translation from sustainability in research to sustainability in practice
- Integration of sustainability in teaching at all levels
Submit your abstract by 20 January 2026
Abstracts of maximum 500 words can be submitted by 20 January 2026 through this online form. Early submissions are encouraged. Responses will be provided by 9 February 2026. While the conference will run in a hybrid format, preference may be given to papers for in-person delivery. We therefore encourage potential presenters to reserve the conference days.
In advance of the conference, the selected presenters will be asked to develop their abstracts into blog posts for Blogging for Sustainability. This is a part of our communication and dissemination strategy for the conference.
All accepted presenters will be required to submit short draft papers for circulation to other participants by 1 September 2026. We aim to publish, subject to agreement with editors and peer review, a set of final papers in a special issue of a leading international journal. We therefore request that abstracts contain original work, not published elsewhere, and that authors commit to participating in the joint publication efforts.
The Conference as a part of the Sustainability Law Week 2026
The Sustainability Law Conference is part of the broader Sustainability Law Week, which will be held at the University of Oslo, 14-18 September 2026.
The conference will be preceded by two PhD Days (14-15 September), featuring presentations by doctoral candidates. On the evening of 15 September, we will have a Sustainability Slam event, with early career researchers and students.
The conference itself will unfold over three days, each with a distinct focus:
Day 1 (16 September) will be dedicated to conceptualizing and discussing sustainability law as a transformative and interdisciplinary field of research and teaching. We envisage presentation of papers that critically engage with sustainability and law, including Indigenous, feminist, and postcolonial perspectives, as well as perspectives from major economies.
Day 2 (17 September) will offer a deep dive into corporate sustainability law as a field within the field of sustainability law. We envisage presentation of papers discussing regional, national, or other case studies that analyze the status quo and propose changes in various contexts.
Day 3 (18 September) will focus on charting ways forward, emphasizing transdisciplinary and innovative approaches. Rather than concentrating on traditional paper presentations, this third day will have interactive sessions, workshops, and collaborative problem-solving exercises designed to engage participants from various sectors in addressing real-world sustainability challenges.
Papers selected in response to this call will mainly be presented on days 1 and 2 of the conference.
Academic Organising Committee
- Alessio Bartolacelli
- Sarah Cornell
- Emma Coulthard
- Adam Leaver
- Maria Lundberg
- Eléonore Maitre-Ekern
- Anne-Christin Mittwoch
- Chiara Morfea
- Heidi Rapp Nilsen
- Giulia Petrachi
- Beate Sjåfjell
- Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde
- King Men Teoh
Please direct any questions to Beate Sjåfjell