Postdoctoral Researcher and Coordinator of the Research Innovation Hub
Contact: caroline.lichuma@uni.fau
Short Bio
ORCID ID: 0000-0003-0799-7651
Caroline is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Human Rights Erlangen Nuremberg (CHREN). Her current research critically analyzes temporality in human rights law with a specific focus on fragmented economic globalization and planetary environmental crises. She received her PhD in International Human Rights Law (Summa cum laude) from the Georg-August University of Göttingen in Germany (DAAD Scholar), her LLM in Public International from the New York University( Dean Graduate Merit Scholar) and her LLB from the University of Nairobi. Caroline is a co-rapporteur of the International Law Association’s Business and Human Rights Committee and she co-edits the Business and Human Rights Journal blog.
Caroline’s research project hopes to contribute to the (re)conceptualization of our understanding of temporalized human rights and its implications for the realization of human rights in an era of planetary environmental crises and fragmented economic globalization. The intention is to critically analyze how human rights norms, institutions, and practices can or ought to be reimagined or transformed in the face of, slow violence such as inter alia, climate crisis and a fracturing global economic order. The ultimate goal is, firstly: to develop an innovative understanding of human rights that accounts for time and temporality (past, present, and future), i.e. temporalized human rights, and secondly: to deploy this temporal lens to an analysis of vulnerabilities of workers in GVCs and communities under climate stress, and to the human rights impacts of the fragmented landscape of economic globalization.
Journal Articles
- September 2022, “Between Universalism and Cultural Relativism: The Dilemma of Consent to Female Genital Mutilation in the Tatu Kamau Case” Kabarak Journal of Law and Ethics Volume 6 Issue No. 1.
- September 2023, “International Investment Law Reforms and the Draft Business and Human Rights Treaty: the More Things Change the More They Remain the Same?” Journal of World Investment and Trade Volume 24 Issue 4-5.
- January 2024, “Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence Laws Caught Between Rituals and Ritualism: The Forms and Limits of Business Authority of in the Global Governance of Business and Human Rights” Business and Human Rights Journal
- April 2024, “Risky Business: Critical Reflections on the Sources of Information for Risk Analysis Under the German Supply Chain Law – Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz (LkSG) and the Ramifications for Global South Stakeholders” World Comparative Law (WCL) Journal
Book Chapters
- Caroline Lichuma, “Luxembourgish Civil Society Mobilizing for Corporate Accountability: Prospects and Challenges for Law Making From Below?” in Raluca Grosescu and John G. Dale (eds) Re-envisioning Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Abuses: Civil Society and Transnational Action (Springer, November 2025)
- Caroline Lichuma, “Koloniale Kontinuitäten und Normbildung in Wirtschaft und Menschenrechten: Eine TWAIL-Analyse des Lieferkettensorgfaltspflicht- gesetzes (LkSG) in Dekoloniale Rechtswissenschaft und Praxis (April 2024).
- Georg-August Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany: PhD in Public International Law: Human Rights, June 2023 (Summa Cum Laude), DAAD Scholar
- University of Göttingen & DAAD Award for Outstanding Foreign Student, 2021
- Faculty Prize for Best PhD Thesis, July 2023
- New York University School Of Law, New York, Ny – Dean Graduate Merit Scholar 2012
- University Of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya – Best 3rd Year Student, 2009
- Fifth best student nationally Certified Public Accountant Part l sec 1, June 2005; Kenya Accountants and Secretaries National Examinations Board (KASNEB) Exams
- Best student nationally in CPA Part II Sec 3, June 2006; KASNEB Exams