One highlight of the 2008 Amsterdam Global Conference on Sustainability and Transparency was the integration of an Academic Conference, organized jointly by the Amsterdam Business School of the University of Amsterdam and GRI. The Academic Conference was a great success and, supported by special rates for academics and due to the increased focus on report readers, the participation of academics at the GRI conference has grown significantly compared to the first conference in 2006.

You can find information on the Academic Conference in the Conference Report and Conference in Review documents that are available here on the GRI website. On the conference webpage you can also access Podcasts of all conference sessions, including the 4 academic sessions, as well as PowerPoint documents of some of the presentations.

The Academic Conference was rounded off with an open networking session. All academic participants of the conference were invited to discuss ideas on establishing a more formalized academic network within the global network that constitutes GRI. The session was very well attended and participants made it clear that there is demand for more coordinated engagement with GRI. GRI is delighted that there is such a vibrant and enthusiastic academic community out there working on sustainability, transparency, CSR, business ethics, reporting, and related issues, and we agree that it is time to form a structured academic network around GRI.

As a first step, GRI would like to reach out and ask all interested academics to