Guest Researcher: Janne Mende

Janne Mende is a senior researcher at the University of Giessen, where she leads her DFG-funded research project Business Actors Beyond Public and Private: Authority, Legitimacy, and Responsibility in the United Nations Human Rights Regime. Prior to that, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the division for Globalization & Politics at the University of Kassel. She has held visiting positions at the WZB – Berlin Social Science Center, the Danish Institute for Human Rights, the MPI Heidelberg, and the New School for Social Research (New York), among others. Her research interests include power and legitimacy in global governance, business responsibilities for human rights, and international institutions.

During her time at the School of Global Studies, she works on the relation between power, legitimacy, and common interests in the authority of business enterprises as governance actors. Furthermore, she aims at connecting business responsibility for human rights with the hybrid agency enterprises, when it comes to regulating digital spaces.