Key details
Professor Olga Martin-Ortega
Professor of International Law
Dr Olga Martin-Ortega is Professor of International Law at the School of Law and Criminology. She leads the Business, Human Rights and Environment Research Group and undertakes research on multinational enterprises and human rights, public procurement and human rights, post-conflict reconstruction and transitional justice (see research interests).
Before joining Greenwich, she was Senior Research Fellow at the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict (CHRC), School of Law, University of East London. From 2010 she was also member of the management team at the Centre. Before joining the University of East London, she was a lecturer in law at Napier University (Edinburgh), where she taught European Law. From 2001–05 she worked at the University of Jaen where she was a lecturer in Law and undertook her PhD, funded by a prestigious grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education on formation and training of researchers and lecturers.
Professor Martin-Ortega is a member of the Board of Trustees of Electronics Watch and The Corporate Justice Coalition. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the London Universities Purchasing Consortium and the Steering Committee of the International Learning Lab on Procurement and Human Rights. She has worked with the UK Home Office Modern Slavery Prevention Unit, the Local Government Association, NHS Commercial Solutions, Unison, and the international organisations OSCE and International Labour Organisation and numerous civil society organisations. She conducts training and capacity building for public buyers in the UK and internationally on their roles and responsibilities towards human rights in their supply chain and how to develop human rights due diligence to prevent, mitigate and remediate human rights abuses.
She hosts the podcast The Female Professoriate and co-hosts the podcast The Rights of Others, with Seema Joshi and Fakhar Raza.
Responsibilities within the university
- Leader, Business, Human Rights and the Environment Research Group
- Director of Research and Enterprise, School of Law and Criminology
- Programme Leader, Postgraduate Research Degrees, School of Law and Criminology
- School of Law and Criminology representative, Faculty Research and Enterprise Committee
- UoA18 REF Panel member, School of Law and Criminology
- Equality, Diversity and Inclusion University REF Panel member
- Mentor in the Aurora Programme
- Coordinator of the Female Professoriate
Recognition
- Member of the Transparency in Supply Chains Modern Slavery Strategy and Implementation Group of the Home Office Modern Slavery Prevention Unit
- Member of the Board of Trustees and Advisory Group of Electronics Watch
- Member of the Board of Trustees of The Corporate Justice Coalition
- Member of the Board of Directors of the London Universities Purchasing Consortium
- Member of the Steering Committee of the International Learning Lab on Procurement and Human Rights
- Member of the Executive Committee of the Business, Conflict and Human Rights Network
- Consultant for the European Parliament, OSCE, ILO, Fair Trade Advocacy Office and others
- Former member of the Academic Commission advising the Spanish Government of the drafting of the Spanish National Implementation Plan on Business and Human Rights
- Founder and former Chair of the Board of the Interest Group on Business and Human Rights, European Society of International Law
- Founder and former member of the Executive Committee of the London Transitional Justice Network
- Former editor of the International Journal of Human Rights
- Former member of the Advisory Board of the Revista de Estudios Juridicos (Journal of Legal Studies, Spain)
Research / Scholarly interests
Professor Martin-Ortega’s main research areas are in the field of Public International Law. In particular she researches on business and human rights, sustainable public procurement, post-conflict reconstruction, transitional justice and international criminal law. In the area of business and human rights her research has considered the roles and responsibilities of multinational corporations, with regards to the protection and respect of human rights and the tools available in International law to hold them to account when they participate in human rights violations. She has worked extensively on human rights in global supply chains, with specific focus on the electronics industry and on the development of transparency and human rights due diligence standards. Her latest research focuses on the roles and responsibilities of public buyers with regards to human rights in public supply chains. In the context of this work she advices public buyers, local authorities, governmental bodies and international organisations.
Professor Martin-Ortega’s research has also included work on post-conflict reconstruction and justice after mass atrocities committed during armed conflicts. She has focused on the relationship between peacebuilding, the rule of law and transitional justice. In particular she has led a project considering the role of hybrid tribunals in prosecuting war crimes after conflict and their contribution to the rebuilding of the rule of law funded by the British Academy. She has also participated in projects on peacebuilding and transitional justice, with special emphasis on Africa (funded by British Academy Large Grant; US Institute for Peace; EU VII Framework Project Collaborative Grant), and conducted research on impunity and memory in Spain (funded by Spanish Ministry of Research and Innovation and Catalan Government). She is currently working with Professor Steven Haines on training military personnel on the protection of education during conflict and dissemination of the Safe Schools Declaration.
Key funded projects
Current key funded projects
DATUM- Small Data Mining- Co-Principal Investigator, Innovate UK (£228,900)
DATUM is a research and development project of a collaborative multi-player locative game experience for Shopping Centres. The game aims to promote ethical consumption by supporting the re-opening of sustainable commerce through audio and augmented reality (AR). It explores and engages players in mindful consumption behaviours through small data mining activities following prompts on their mobile devise. The focus of the game is encouraging ethical consumer behaviour through nudging the consumer part of corporate human rights due diligence and technology as a tool to modify behavioural patterns.
DATUM is created and produced by ZU-UK, body\>data\>space and University of Greenwich (BHRE, LETS Lab and CLEI – Co-creating Liveness in Embodied Immersion).
SAPIENS -Sustainability and Procurement in International, European, and National Systems- Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network (ITN) (2021-2025 (€3.9 million).
The objective of SAPIENS is to foster interdisciplinary research into the evolving use of public procurement to address the social and environmental challenges of the 21st century. It aims to create a significantly increased European knowledge base and research capacity on the law, the economics and the business sciences of sustainable public procurement, thus helping Europe in addressing social and environmental challenges. At the heart of the project are 15 PhD projects on various multidisciplinary aspects of Sustainable Public Procurement linked to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
You can find out more about SAPIENS here.