Wouter Vandenhole, current spokesperson of the Law and Development Research Group, delivered the first Koen De Feyter Memorial Lecture at the Belo Horizonte LDRn Conference. The lecture, entitled Geographies of Shared Responsibility for Sustainable Development, for Subaltern People(s), documented Koen De Feyter’s academic legacy in the field of human rights and global development law. It identified some of the core themes in his written work: a human rights approach to development, including the right to development; the rights of indigenous peoples; shared responsibilities of state and non-state actors for development; human rights and the market; the perspective on human rights by ordinary, subaltern people; and literature, music and film. It illustrated how Koen De Feyter’s teaching and research cross-pollinated each other: teaching was a source of research, but also research-driven. It mapped Koen’s research onto places where he had institutional affiliations. Those places, and the people there, co-shaped Koen’s thinking and writing: they represent geographies of his legacy.
