Genevieve LeBaron

Position: Co-Director

Email: g.lebaron@sheffield.ac.uk

Areas of interest and expertise: corporate power and profits; the evolving nature of work; forced labour, human trafficking and modern slavery; global supply chains; activism; feminist and global political economy.

You can follow Genevieve on twitter at @glebaron

Genevieve LeBaron is Professor of Politics and Co-Director of SPERI. She is also Co-Chair of the Yale University Modern Day Slavery Working Group and an Editor of Review of International Political Economy.

Her research focuses on the political economy of the global labour market, including current research projects on the governance of transnational supply chains, the politics and effectiveness of corporate social responsibility, and the business models of forced labour. She has published in leading political economy journals, including Socio-Economic Review, Review of International Political Economy, and New Political Economy.

In 2017, she was ranked the #1 academic (and #38 overall) on the global Top 100 Human Trafficking & Slavery Influence Leaders List, alongside leaders from the UK and US governments, Apple, Ford and the New York Times. In 2015, she was awarded the Rising Star Engagement Award from the British Academy in recognition of her contributions to research and policy-making on forced labour.

Genevieve currently holds grants from the UK Economic and Social Research Council and the British Academy and UK Department for International Development. Her research has also attracted funding from the Ford Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the UK Economic and Social Research Council’s Global Challenges Research Fund, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, amongst other funders.

Genevieve is co-founder of openDemocracy.net’s Beyond Trafficking and Slavery, a popular journalistic site that brings together stakeholders who are serious about tackling modern slavery’s economic, political, and social root causes, and develops new strategies for change. She has written for leading newspapers including The Guardian and Salon.com, and her research on forced labour has been profiled in Fortune Magazine, Forbes, and The Guardian, and has been cited widely in policy initiatives. She is a columnist for the United Nations’ knowledge platform Delta 8.7.

Prior to joining Sheffield, Genevieve was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia. She has also been a visiting scholar at the International Labour Organization in Geneva, the University of California, Berkeley, Osgoode Hall Law School, and Sciences Po. In 2015-2016, she was Yale University’s Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery Fellow.

Her website is: globalbusinessofforcedlabour.ac.uk

Key publications by Genevieve LeBaron

• Genevieve LeBaron (ed) (2018, forthcoming). Researching Forced Labour in the Global Economy: Methodological Challenges and Advances. Proceedings of the British Academy series. Oxford University Press.
• Peter Dauvergne & Genevieve LeBaron (2014). Protest Inc: The Corporatization of Activism. Cambridge: Polity. [Finalist for 2015 BISA-IPEG Book Prize]
• Andrew Crane, Genevieve LeBaron, Kam Phung, Laya Behbahani, and Jean Allain (2018, forthcoming). ‘Innovations in the Business Models of Modern Slavery: Exploring the Dark Side of Business Model Innovation.’ Proceedings of the 2018 Academy of Management Meeting. [Paper judged one of the meeting’s ‘Best Papers’]
• Genevieve LeBaron & Nicola Phillips (2018) ‘States and the Political Economy of Unfree Labour.’ New Political Economy (doi: 10.1080/13563467.2017. 1420642)
• Genevieve LeBaron, Neil Howard, Cameron Thibos & Penelope Kyritsis. Confronting Root Causes: Forced Labour in Global Supply Chains. London and Sheffield: openDemocracy and SPERI.
• Genevieve LeBaron (2018) ‘Women and Unfree Labor in the Global Political Economy.’ In Adrienne Roberts & Juanita Elias (eds) Handbook on the International Political Economy of Gender. Edward Elgar.
• Genevieve LeBaron & Andreas Ruhmkorf (2017) ‘The Domestic Politics of Corporate Accountability Legislation: Struggles Over the 2015 UK Modern Slavery Act.’ Socio-Economic Review (doi: 10.1093).
• Andrew Crane, Genevieve LeBaron, Jean Allain & Laya Behbahani. ‘Governance Gaps in Eradicating Forced Labour: From Global to Domestic Supply Chains.’ Regulation & Governance (doi: 10.111/rego.12162).
• Genevieve LeBaron, Jane Lister & Peter Dauvergne (2017). ‘Governing Global Supply Chain Sustainability Through the Ethical Audit Regime.’ Globalizations 14(6): 958-975.
• Genevieve LeBaron & Andreas Ruhmkorf (2017) ‘Steering CSR Through Home State Regulation: A Comparison of the UK Bribery Act and Modern Slavery Act.’ Global Policy Journal 8(3): 15-28.
• Genevieve LeBaron (2017). ‘The Current and Coming Crisis of Indecent Work.’ In Colin Hay and Tom Hunt (eds) The Coming Crisis.
• Genevieve LeBaron (2017) Entries for ‘Global Value Chain,’ ‘Human Trafficking,’ and ‘Internationally Displaced Person.’ Oxford Dictionary of Politics 4th Edition. Oxford University Press.
• Genevieve LeBaron, Jane Lister & Peter Dauvergne (2017). ‘The New Gatekeeper: Ethical Audits as a Mechanism of Global Value Chain Governance.’ In A. Claire Cutler & Thomas Dietz (eds) The Politics of Private Transnational Governance by Contract.
• Nicola Phillips, Genevieve LeBaron & Sara Wallin (2016) Mapping and Measuring the Effectiveness of Labour-related Disclosure Requirements for Global Supply Chains. Geneva: International Labour Organization.
• Genevieve LeBaron (2016). ‘Slavery, People Trafficking, and Forced Labour: Implications for Development.’ In Jean Gruegel and Daniel Hammett (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of International Development.
• Genevieve LeBaron & Jane Lister (2015) ‘Benchmarking Global Supply Chains: The Power of the ‘Ethical Audit’ Regime.’ Review of International Studies 41(5): 905-924.
• Genevieve LeBaron (2015) ‘Unfree Labour Beyond Binaries: Hierarchy, Insecurity, and Labor Market Restructuring.’ International Feminist Journal of Politics 17(1): 1-19.
• Genevieve LeBaron (2014). ‘Subcontracting is Not Illegal, But is it Unethical? Business Ethics, Forced Labor, and Economic Success.’ Brown Journal of World Affairs 20(2): 237-249.
• Genevieve LeBaron & Alison J Ayers (2013) ‘The Rise of a ‘New Slavery’? Understanding African Unfree Labour Through Neoliberalism.’ Third World Quarterly 34(5): 873-892.
• Peter Dauvergne & Genevieve LeBaron (2013) ‘The Social Cost of Environmental Solutions.’ New Political Economy 18(3): 410-430.
• Genevieve LeBaron & Adrienne Roberts (2012) ‘Confining Social Insecurity: Neoliberalism and the Rise of the 21st Century Debtor’s Prison.’ Politics & Gender 8(1): 1-25.
• Genevieve LeBaron (2010). ‘The Political Economy of the Household: Neoliberal Restructuring, Enclosures, and Daily Life.’ Review of International Political Economy 17(5): 889-912.
• Genevieve LeBaron & Adrienne Roberts (2010). ‘Towards a Feminist Political Economy of Capitalism and Carcerality.’ Signs Journal of Women in Culture and Society 36(1): 19-44.
• Genevieve LeBaron (2008) ‘Captive Labour and the Free Market: Prisoners and Production in the USA.’ Capital & Class 32(2): 59-81.