IDP Business and Human Rights – Doctoral Researcher

Sabrina Rau is a doctoral researcher at Friedrich Alexander University focusing on the intersection of business, human rights, and technology. She is additionally a Senior Research Officer in the Human Rights, Big Data and Technology (HRBDT) project based at the University of Essex. Her research focuses primarily on rights, regulation remedies and the role of business in the digital age. Sabrina holds an Honours BA from the University of Toronto in political science and environmental studies and an LLM in international human rights and humanitarian law from the University of Essex.

Her research project asses the role of non-judicial non-state-based grievance mechanisms as a pathway for effective remedy when it comes to downstream algorithmic human rights harm. This will be done, first, by an investigation of algorithmic human rights harm through an international human rights law lens, looking beyond individual harm to collective and societal harm. Second, the research highlights business accountability for human rights harm and business relationships to harm followed by an investigation of specific operational-level grievance mechanisms and the role they play in the remedy ecosystem. This research aims to bridge a gap in academic literature covering access to remedies for algorithmic harm and seek innovative ways for business involvement in the remedy ecosystem.