Building academic bridges to study corporate reparations for human rights abuse

What made you decide to apply for a grant at the Leading House for the Latin American Region?

In 2017, I obtained my PhD from the Institute for Business Ethics of the University of St Gallen. My goal was to pursue a career in academia, a profession I enjoy and believe in. Yet, career-wise, transitioning from a PhD is not always a bed of roses. In academia, we do not talk enough about this crucial moment. As is the case with most PhD students finalising their degree, I had plenty of research ideas but no financial resources to execute them. The Leading House for the Latin American Region’s One-Year Research Merger Grant (OYRM), a grant of CHF 30’000 – CHF 50’000, was the instrument that, looking back, allowed me to implement my research projects and granted me the opportunity to stay in the field of academia.

What was the subject matter of your research?

My doctoral studies focused on the intersection of business and human rights issues. More specifically, I investigated the responsibilities of corporations towards mending abuses of human rights. It was a normative ethical piece grounded on deliberative philosophy. In contrast, I then had the intention to look at those ideas from an empirical perspective. I was interested in societies and countries transitioning from conflict into peace, which provided an extreme context to examine corporate reparations for human rights abuses.

What were you able to achieve with the grant?

I had preliminary contacts with the Centro Regional de Empresas y Emprendimientos Responsables (CREER), a relevant research & policy institute in Colombia. Together we drafted the proposal for the Leading House’s OYRM grant. Receiving this grant re-energised the hopes for my scholarly goals. The grant allowed us to conduct exploratory research on the ground. We held interviews and developed case studies around three companies with close relationships with the Colombian conflict. We also conducted focus groups with experts and organised several dissemination events, where we shared our findings with diverse audiences.

More than the field research that we conducted in Colombia, I was able to establish meaningful relationships. The four short stays I made in Colombia during my OYRM grant allowed me to meet other scholars in the country that research closely related topics. Together with colleagues in Switzerland and Colombia, building on the exploratory work conducted so far enabled us to compare the Colombian cases with other countries in a similar post-conflict situation.

We eventually drafted a proposal that won the support of CHF 244’230 from a significant research fund: the Swiss Network for International Studies research grant. We are now into our second year of implementation.

All in all, the OYRM grant from the Leading House for the Latin American Region was instrumental in moving forward my scholarly career. It provided the means to conduct field research in Colombia, but more crucially, it brought the opportunity to create a long-lasting, productive scholarly relationship that is still fruitful today.