Terra Lawson-Remer is currently a dissertation research fellow at the UN World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER). She earned her J.D. from NYU School of Law and is currently completing her Ph.D. in Political Economics at NYU’s Law & Society Institute.

Her research addresses globalization and the political economy of economic development, including natural resource governance, international trade and human rights law, property rights, poverty and climate change, extractive industries, transnational corporations, natural resources and conflict, economic and social rights, and the relationship between formal law and informal social norms.

Ms. Lawson-Remer has conducted field research in Kenya, Indonesia, and Fiji, and teaches Institutions & Economic Development at NYU. She previously worked as a Legal Fellow in the Business & Human Rights Program at Amnesty International USA; for former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, at the Ethical Globalization Initiative; at the American Civil Liberties Union of New York; and as a consultant to numerous other environmental, human rights and social justice organizations.

As an undergraduate at Yale University, Ms. Lawson-Remer was the co-founder of STARC (Students Transforming and Resisting Corporations), a national student organization that advocated for corporate responsibility in the face of increased globalization. STARC was a principal organizer of student participation in the Seattle WTO protests in November 1999 and the IMF/World Bank demonstrations in April 2000, and after 9/11 was one of the first civil society organizations to call for a poverty fighting aspect to combating terrorism.

On a lighter note, her exploits include surfing, rockclimbing, and rappelling off the side of the New York Plaza Hotel with a 40 x 60 foot anti-Bush banner http://questionauthority.org/nycplazaaction/ during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Ms. Lawson-Remer has appeared on CBS, CNN, and Democracy Now, and been interviewed by numerous national and local publications, including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Nation, The New York Post, the New Haven Advocate, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and USA Today.

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