Who We Are
Founding Members
Dr. Akinwumi Ogunranti
Akinwumi.Ogunranti@umanitoba.ca
Dr. Akinwumi Ogunranti (Akin) is an Assistant Professor of law at the University of Manitoba. He earned his LLB from the University of Ilorin and was called to the Nigerian Bar. He practiced law in a full-service commercial law firm for three years before starting his graduate studies. Akin earned his LLM and Ph.D. degrees at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University. He has received many awards, including the Law Foundation of Nova Scotia entrance scholarship, the Dean Ronald St. John MacDonald Graduate Fellowship in Law, the Schulich Fellowship, and the Crawford Fellowship.
Dr. Ogunranti writes and publishes in the business and human rights field, focusing broadly on corporate accountability relating to human rights, climate, and the environment. His research covers thematic issues involving global governance, international dispute resolution, international investment law, and conflict of laws. In 2024, Dr. Ogunranti was appointed to the International Law Association’s Committee on Business and Human Rights.
Dr. Nathan Derejko
Nathan.Derejko@umanitoba.ca
Dr. Nathan Derejko is the Mauro Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice and Assistant Professor of Law at Robson Hall. Previously, Nathan was the Director of the Human Rights Centre Clinic at the University of Essex, Director of the Masters in Human Rights programme at University College London, a visiting lecturer at the International Institute of International Humanitarian Law in Sanremo Italy, and a doctoral research fellow at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland Galway. Nathan has a PhD in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom, an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the National University of Ireland Galway, and a BA in Political Science from Dalhousie University in Canada.
Dr. Laura Reimer
Laura.Reimer@umanitoba.ca
Dr. Laura Reimer is currently the Director of Program Development for the Faculty of Law and the Marcel A. Desautels Centre for Private Enterprise and the Law, and the Chairperson of the Faculty of Law Business Advisory Committee. Dr. Reimer was the first Practicum and Professional Development Coordinator for the Master of Human Rights program in the Faculty of Law. She is a former assistant professor of Public Administration and Public Policy at the University of Winnipeg, where she was awarded the prestigious Clifford J. Robson Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence.
Upon completion of her Ph D, Laura held an administrative teaching post-doctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Her research interests explore the intersection of theory and practice, and her expertise merges peacebuilding practices with policy, governance, and leadership. She has particular interest and expertise in education policy and Indigenous education, and is a Commissioner with the Manitoba Law Reform Commission. Laura’s eight books and many publications explore diverse enquiries and practices of positive transformative change and reconciliation. She is a trained Mediator and has been a leadership, governance, and strategic planning consultant. In 2023, Laura attended the 12th United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland.
Dr. Mary Shariff
Mary.Shariff@umanitoba.ca
Dr. Mary J. Shariff is a Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba, where she serves as Associate Dean (Graduate Studies) and Director of the Master of Human Rights Program. She holds a PhD and LL.M. from Trinity College Dublin, an LL.B. from the University of Manitoba, and a B.Sc. from the University of Winnipeg. Her transdisciplinary scholarship bridges private and public law, business, human rights, medicine and bioethics, technology, environmental and natural-resources law, and legal strategy. She is affiliated with the University of Manitoba’s Centre on Aging, Centre for Human Rights Research, and Manitoba Lab for AI Law and Ethics. She is also the founder of the MHR Program Footsteps podcast.
A significant strand of Shariff’s scholarship examines how organizations and businesses use law strategically, including through litigation, corporate management, risk management, competition, contracting, and alternative dispute resolution. Her emerging scholarship examines how emerging technologies generate novel legal arguments and expose gaps and uncertainties in existing legal frameworks, with particular attention to AI disclosure, anthropomorphic design, technological entanglement, human vulnerability, and the strategic use of legal grey zones.
Her human rights scholarship addresses autonomy, vulnerability, disability, aging, health care, and end-of-life decision-making, while her environmental and animal-law work considers the relationships among economic activity, natural resources, environmental protection, and non-human animals. Across these areas, Shariff examines the stability and cogency of law, how legal frameworks shape decision-making and the allocation of rights and responsibilities, and how law responds—or fails to respond—to evolving challenges, including those created by law itself.
Human rights in the modern office context encompass fair treatment, non-discrimination, and a supportive environment that upholds dignity and equality among employees.
FangXiaNuo/iStock
Research Network
Dr. Anil Yilmaz Vastardis
AYilma@essex.ac.uk
Anil joined the Essex School of Law and Human Rights Centre in September 2015. She is now a Senior Lecturer and Director of Research. She studied law at Marmara University in Turkey and she is a non-practising lawyer at the Istanbul Bar Association. She holds an LLM in International Trade Law and a PhD in Law from the University of Essex. Anil is a co-director of the Essex Business and Human Rights Project. Her main research interests are in the fields of international investment law and business and human rights. Her research bridges the gap between corporate law, international investment law, human rights law, and tort law, examining how these areas can and should interact so as to operationalise human rights standards in the modern business context. She has published works in leading international law journals and edited collections on parent-subsidiary relationships in the business and human rights context, non-financial reporting, duty of care in supply chain relationships, human rights in investment contracts and the embedded inequalities in the investment treaty regime. Her recent book The Nationality of Corporate Investors under International Investment Law was published with Hart Publishing in 2020.
Professor Sara L Seck
Sara.Seck@dal.ca
Professor Sara L Seck is the Yogis & Keddy Chair in Human Rights Law and the Director of the Marine and Environmental Law Institute at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, in Canada. Her research and teaching interests are situated at the intersection of international environmental and human rights law, with attention to business responsibilities, climate justice, and, most recently, the protection of the marine environment. Her work is informed and inspired by feminist, relational and intersectional approaches to legal analysis, including TWAIL. Co-edited books include the 2021 Cambridge Handbook on Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development and the 2021 Research Handbook on Climate Change Law and Loss and Damage, as well as volumes 36-38 of the Ocean Yearbook. In recent years she has led research for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) on topics relating to business, human rights, and the environment including a project designed to clarify human rights-informed responsible business climate action, and a project to develop training materials on a human rights-based approach to the plastics value chain. She is an active member of the Global Network on Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE) and the International Law Association (ILA).
Professor Penelope Simmons
Penelope.Simons@uOttawa.ca
Penelope Simons is a Full Professor and the Gordon F. Henderson Chair in Human Rights at the Faculty of Law (Common Law Section), University of Ottawa. A global leader in business and human rights, her research focuses on the human rights implications of domestic and transnational extractive sector activity, state responsibility for corporate complicity in human rights violations, the regulation of transnational corporations, gender and resource extraction, as well as the intersections between transnational corporate activity, human rights and international economic law. She is the co-author with Audrey Macklin of The Governance Gap: Extractive Industries, Human Rights, and the Home State Advantage (Routledge 2014 ). She also co-author with Tony VanDuzer and Graham Mayeda of Integrating Sustainable Development into International Investment Agreements: A Guide for Developing Countries (Commonwealth Secretariat, 2013). Penelope is a member of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre, the Interdisciplinary Research Group on the Territories of Extractivism (GRITE) and the Center for Environmental Law and Global Sustainability, at the University of Ottawa, as well as the SSHRC-funded Canadian Partnership on Strengthening Justice for International Crimes. In 2018, Penelope was awarded the Walter S. Tarnoplosky Award, recognizing her as “an individual who has made a significant contribution to human rights.”