About the Laureate Program in Global Corporations and International Law

The LPGCIL is a collaborative and multidisciplinary program of research directed toward understanding, interrogating and reconceptualising the relationship between global corporations, states and international law. Our research takes an historical and theoretically informed approach to present concerns, which locates the relationship between companies, state and plural laws in an historical context stretching from the early modern period to the present day. The new conceptual, historical, methodological and empirical resources we generate, will contribute to building the infrastructure on which a more balanced relationship between states and global corporations can be based.

A key part of the program involves training legal researchers in the methods needed to equip them to meet the research challenges of the future. The program features a significant element of research training, mentorship and leadership designed to contribute to Australian research capabilities in the humanities and social sciences, and to build scholarly communities in which Australian researchers can build partnerships with international scholars. To this end, in 2023, the LPGCIL auspiced the creation of the Transnational Association of Legal Scholars, and established the TALS Academy, a virtual intensive program for doctoral and early career researchers in law.

The Laureate Program is supported by an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship awarded to Professor Sundhya Pahuja, with significant additional resources provided by the University of Melbourne.

Professor Pahuja was also awarded a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Fellowship, awarded each year to an outstanding Australian Laureate Fellow from the humanities, arts and social sciences disciplines, to undertake activities to support and promote women in research. She is the immediate Past Director of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities at the Melbourne Law School.