Stephanie Triefus

Winner Dissertation Prize 2025

Report by the selection committee 

Stefanie Triefus analyses a highly relevant societal question with scientifically rigorous and uniquely multifaceted methods to offer an insightful and urgent conclusion. The jury was especially impressed by the invocative style of International investment law from below; Taking community rights seriously combining clear presentations of complicated legal debates with a plurality of voices of the involved community for an innovative ‘law-on-the-ground’ approach. While such methods are commonly used in studies of human rights law, the application in the domain of investment law is innovative. This is, however, by far not the only innovative and unique aspect that the jury signalled in the work.  

International investment law from below; Taking community rights seriously, exposes the practical and legal tensions between international companies, states and local communities in the extractive industry. Triefus examines how these three parties, based on their respective interests, operate, cooperate and oppose each other in extractive industrial projects. By systematically examining dispute settlements that arise from extractive projects from the point of view of the local communities effected by such activities and by having these local communities commentate through interviews that are included in the book, Triefus offers a unique bottom-up perspective in her research and writing.  

Using these two perspectives – an analysis of the legal conditions at play and the practical application on the ground – Triefus shows that participation rights and democratic principles through which local communities’ interests have traditionally been channeled and where improvement in taking such interests into account is conventionally sought, cannot prevent the destructive socio-economic effects of extractive industry on local communities. Turning away from better researched examples of extractive projects in the Global South, Triefus presents an extensive case study from Romania. Crucially, Triefus moves beyond the expected observation that socio-politically and economically weak societies are least well able to protect the interests of local communities vis-à-vis international investors, to show that the problem is due to legal restrictions that create two incompatible obligations for states, namely on the one hand honouring companies’ interests according to investment law and on the other, citizens’ rights based on humanitarian law. Rather than seeking a greater role for local communities’ participation within investment law or pointing to socio-political conditions, Triefus concludes that this legal incompatibility needs to be addressed.  

Having taken us on a tour via international legal academies and corporate lawyers’ offices to Romanian living rooms, Triefus’ ambitious conclusion demands action from international law-making institutions to address the persistent ineffectiveness of involving local communities’ opinions in extractive industrial projects – a conclusion that is all the more urgent as the world’s need for natural resources will lead to an increase of such projects.