UCD College of Business Professor Donna Marshall and Visiting Assistant Professor Hakan Karaosmanâs research in sustainable and ethical supply chain has earned them a place on the prestigious Vogue Business 100 Innovators list which is hand-picked by the publicationâs global team of editors.
The annual list recognises people at the forefront of industry overhaul and spotlights people around the world who are fostering new ideas, pushing forward innovation, and changing the way we view the future of the fashion, beauty and luxury industries. It champions those working behind the scenes to create the projects and companies that are driving new ways of thinking and doing business.
âWe hope that our work can shine a light on the unspoken issues in fashion, especially at the fashion brand level,â said Professor Marshall who is one of the most published women researchers in Europe and Director of Fashionâs Responsible Supply Chain Hub (FReSCH), a UN-recognised and EU-awarded action research project.
âWe want to make fashion brands aware that they are dealing with peopleâs lives every day, both in their supply chains and in society. The shameful decision-making happening right now in many board rooms and procurement departments across many fashion brands, which is putting barriers in the way of decarbonisation and that exploits the most vulnerable of people, needs to be eradicated.â
âWorkers in fashion supply chains, at the bare minimum, should be able to live with dignity and respect with a living wage and not have to worry about how they will feed themselves and their families or put a roof over their heads. Abdicating responsibility and pushing problems like these onto suppliers, and ultimately their workers, needs to stop and it needs to stop now,â concluded Marshall who is also the Executive Director of the UCD Earth Institute: People, Work, Society initiative.
Professor Marshall partners closely with Assistant Professor Hakan Karaosman, an internationally experienced and award-winning scientific researcher focusing on climate action and social justice in fashion supply chain management. Hakan is the current chair of the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion (UCRF). He is also the Chief Scientist and Co-Director at FReSCH which is hosted by UCD College of Business Centre for Business and Society (CeBaS) which is a large, multi-disciplinary centre designed to understand and directly contribute to the advancement of business and to provide academic, science-based research solutions to some of the worldâs biggest problems.