Dr. Nora Lohmeyer was invited to give a talk on "CSR buying practices at international retailers" at a workshop co-organized by the Technical University (TU) Dresden, the Notre Dame University Bangladesh and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

The two-day workshop was part of a larger project "Introducing sustainability to the textile engineering curriculum to guide sustainable business practices of future managers in the Bangladesh textile industry’," which is part of the program “German-Bangladesh Higher Education Cooperation in the Textile and Garment Sector” within the framework of the German-Bangladesh Higher Education Network for Sustainable Textiles (HEST). HEST fosters cooperation between German and Bangladeshi Higher Education Institutions with the aim to improve the understanding of responsible and sustainable management, through sound and practice-oriented qualification of future executives. This process is fundamental to support the transformation process of Bangladeshi economy towards a sustainable economy. To achieve the aim of the programme, teaching and research at Bangladeshi Universities will be improved by international cooperation. The project focuses mainly on realizing tangible improvement in research and qualification services with respect to the needs of responsible and sustainable management in the textile and clothing sector.

Nora Lohmeyer gave insights into the buying and CSR practices in German, but also Australian, Swedish and UK retailers and brands as well as the changes that have been introduced as a response to the Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013, including the effects of these changes on factory managers as well as workers. The audience consisted of representatives of Bangaldeshi higher education institutions, experts and researchers from the field of global supply chain management as well as doctoral students from TU Dresden. Topics discussed included "Challenges and Opportunities for Bottom-Up Labour Governance: The Case of South Indian Garment Cluster" (Vivek Soundararajan, Birmingham University), "Horizontal networks in supply chains: The case of Bangladeshi Ready Made Garment suppliers" (Enrico Fontana, Stockholm School of Economics), Gender Equality and Responsible Business (Lauren McCarthy, Royal Holloway), "Addressing Misrepresentation of Marginalized Groups in Developing Countries" (Rashed Chowdhury, University of Southampton), and "The German Partnership for Sustainable Textiles: An effective initiative to achieve systemic changes in the textile supply chain?" (Tim Zahn, Textilbündnis).