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

·         Sign up to the GRI Academic Network mailing list through which we will keep you in the loop on what is going on around the development of the GRI academic network;

·         Help us map the field and let us know of any (a) research related to sustainability reporting (b) related teaching materials, or (c) projects involving sustainability reporting by academic institutions that you have written or are aware of;

·         Contact us if you or another researcher in your network would be interested in a research project on mapping the state of the art of academic research in the field or the global CSR/sustainability reporting landscape;

·         Inform us of any related existing networks and initiatives so we can get in touch and align our efforts towards a common goal

Get in touch!

Your point of contact at GRI on the above calls for participation and any related questions, comments or suggestions is GRI’s Network Coordinator Leena Wokeck, who you can contact be email at wokeck@globalreporting.org or by telephone on +31 20 531 00 18. We look forward to working with you!