EU Horizion 2020 Marie Sktodowska-Curie Actions Funding awarded to BHRE

Professor Olga Martin-Ortega leads the project on sustainable public procurement and the Business, Human Right and the Environment Research Group (BHRE), which is one of the leading centres of research on socially responsible public procurement in the UK and Europe.

The project, called SAPIENS -Sustainability and Procurement in International, European, and National Systems- has been awarded with €3.9 million. and combines 10 universities from 8 countries. The network is an interdisciplinary collaboration, pooling world-leading researchers from relevant disciplines of law, economics and business studies from European Universities. Moreover, 18 partners, including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organisation, George Washington University, Fair Trade Advocacy Office, Electronics Watch and Eating City, as well as national agencies and public purchasers are contributing to the training programme. The project will fully fund one Early Stage Researcher who will be primarily based at Greenwich developing her research under the supervision of Professor Martin-Ortega and another ESR who will be co-supervised by her and based at the University of Turin.

SAPIENS aims to significantly increase 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). The project will also produce significant research results in law, economics, business studies and social science, make them openly available, facilitate the utilisation of that knowledge by policymakers, think tanks, business, and the legal and other professions, and to train a uniquely qualified cohort with professional prospects inside but also beyond academia.

This award confirms the leadership of the University of Greenwich in the field of sustainable public procurement research and will also allow us to grow our team and our European network to advance our research and knowledge transfer activities. We are looking forward to working together to advance the Sustainable Development Goals and make public procurement a force for change in public supply chains.