Anne Lafarre

Linocut portrait by Ivo van Leeuwen

Part of the portrait series Women in Academia

Academic Portrait 

"My name is Anne Lafarre. I love doing research. In my cum laude PhD research, I showed that legal rules can affect shareholder voting behavior in annual general meetings. This increased my research interest in corporate law and corporate governance, and particularly how legal rules can stimulate long-term oriented governance structures for large corporations.

My main research question is how corporate law initiatives, particularly those focusing on shareholders, can contribute to sustainability. Without large corporations it is impossible to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Corporations are not only major creators of wealth, innovations, and employment, but can also cause environmental degradation, human rights violations, and inequality. Shareholders can play an important role here, but their motives, work processes and impact are very unclear and non-transparent.

In my Veni research, I investigate the role that shareholders can play from legal and practical perspectives, using different empirical techniques and data sources. By bringing forward research-based recommendations for our legal framework, I can contribute to a major societal challenge.

My fascination for data and empirical research brings me to another important aspect that makes the university an amazing place: I really enjoy teaching, and I gladly discuss topics in my field of interests with our students. I serve as the academic director of the joint Data Science Bachelor’s program at Tilburg University (together with Eindhoven University of Technology), which is a great honor."