Workshop Theme
The workshop theme, justice in corporate sustainability, is inspired by the academic organisers’ deep engagement in corporate sustainability as the contribution of business to achieving sustainability as a safe and just world (Sjåfjell & Cornell 2024). ‘Safe’ is about mitigating pressures on planetary boundaries, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and novel entities (Richardson et al. 2023). ‘Just’ is about securing social foundations, including protecting human rights, ensuring living wages, gender equality, and fair taxation, and combatting racism and exclusion, and corruption (Leach, Raworth & Rockström 2013).
The EU is often regarded as a leading global actor on corporate sustainability. However, much of current corporate sustainability efforts in the EU are informed by a specific approach to mitigating financial and corporate risks of unsustainability, rather than working towards sustainability as a safe and just world. The unprecedented range of rules put into place over the last few years, with sustainability-oriented changes in accounting law, various aspects of financial market law, and product regulation and other aspects of the circular economy, either do not engage with justice aspects of sustainability at all, or they do it in a way that is very limited and can be accused of being Western-centric, neocolonialist and imperialist (Lichuma, 2022; Dehbi & Martin-Ortega, 2023). With the risks-based approach, informing also, e.g., the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and the Forced Labour Regulation, legislative initiatives appear to be more about protecting business from the risks of unsustainability, than actively working towards a safer and more just world. The current Omnibus proposals in the EU exacerbate these negative tendencies.
Our aim with this workshop is to bring together a range of contributions on how justice is conceptualised in corporate sustainability contexts, with feminist, postcolonial and other critiques of current approaches, and proposals for change.
Preparation for the workshop
Timely submission of working papers is a precondition for participation in the workshop. Short working papers of a maximum of 2,500 words, including footnotes, will be due by 9 May 2026. The word limit for the short working papers is chosen to enable all workshop participants to read all papers in preparation for the workshop, and to give space for developing the themes of the individual papers after the workshop, based on the comments and discussion.
Two commentators are allocated to each paper with the aim of creating close engagement with the papers from very early on in the workshop. Each participant is appointed as commentator to two other papers, with a defined structure to the feedback and discussion. This structured approach reinforces the atmosphere of serious intellectual engagement, collegial responsibility and tact and generosity in the style of communication, which characterize the Daughters of Themis workshops.
Structure for discussion of papers
About the workshop
The Daughters of Themis annual workshops are deliberately designed to be small, welcoming, and in-depth. Our annual workshops are a warm and supportive space in which constructive, critical, and inspiring dialogues can take place between participants, whilst nourishing the mind and body in a peaceful and idyllic natural setting. Workshop spaces are limited to 10-12 participants, so that each participant can benefit from extended discussion of their work, with the workshop sessions shaped to ensure interactive discussion.
The workshop will be held from Tuesday 26 May to Friday 29 May 2026 around the now iconic stone table under a pergola (see the picture here from the 2025 workshop) at Cavo Perlevos Guesthouse on the Greek island of Kea, with accommodation in two neighbouring guesthouses. We offer an optional networking day on Kea on Monday 25 May 2026 and an optional reflection day on Saturday 30 May 2026.
Academic organising committee for the 2026 workshop
- Nadia Bernaz, Associate Professor in the LAW group at Wageningen University and Director of the EU Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on Corporate Sustainability and Human Rights Law
- Chiara Morfea, PhD candidate, University of Bergen, Faculty of Law
- Beate Sjåfjell, Professor, University of Oslo, Centre for Global Sustainability & Faculty of Law
Questions can be directed to Beate Sjåfjell.