Dr Lessa was highly commended for her work improving routes to justice for victims of transnational human rights violations in South America.

Dr Lessa's research focuses on the victims of Operation Condor, the covert cooperation between military dictatorships in South America in the 1970s to silence political opponents in exile. Her work has sought to bring justice and accountability to the victims of such transnational human rights abuses, which, because they involve more than one state, have historically been difficult to investigate. In particular, she has compiled a database of information relevant to the cases of hundreds of victims of these crimes which has had a significant impact on subsequent trials. 

You can read more about this work in the latest issue of our alumni magazine here.

The O²RB Excellence in Impact Awards, supported by the University of Oxford’s ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, recognise and reward social scientists whose research has achieved excellent economic and social impact.

The O²RB partnership brings together the University of Oxford with the Open University, University of Reading and Oxford Brookes University.

The other Highly Commended academics are:

• Dr Stephen Fisher, Mr Dan Snow, Ms Martha Kirby and Dr Zack Grant (Department of Sociology, University of Oxford), highly commended for influencing public and government awareness of climate change attitudes through global media engagement.
• Prof Rosa Freedman (University of Reading), highly commended for significant international impact on policy and practice to safeguard against abuse by humanitarian aid workers.
• Prof Mark Graham and The Fairwork Foundation Team (Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford), highly commended for significant impact on corporate and government policies leading to improved working conditions for workers in the digital gig economy around the world.
• Prof Suzanne Graham (University of Reading), highly commended for significant international impact on foreign language teaching practices and student achievement.
• Prof Trish Greenhalgh (Nuffield Department of Primary Healthcare Sciences, University of Oxford), highly commended for significant contribution to policy discussions and public understanding of COVID-19 precautions internationally.
• Prof Tarunabh Khaitan (Faculty of Law, University of Oxford), highly commended for significant impact on judicial approaches to discrimination law in India, as well as influencing legislative reform and shaping public discourse
• Prof Sandra Wachter and Dr Brent Mittelstadt (Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford), highly commended for significant international impact on law, policy and business practice around the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence.

The news follows the earlier announcement of the overall Winners of the Awards:

• Dr Gemma Briggs (School of Psychology and Counselling, The Open University), awarded for: Advising the national campaign to educate drivers on the dangers of hands-free phone use
• Dr Jamie Lachman and Professor Lucie Cluver (Department of Social Policy & Intervention, University of Oxford), awarded for: Scale-up of evidence-based parenting programmes for more than 196 million people during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Professor Melinda Mills, Dr Jennifer Beam Dowd, and team (Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, Department of Sociology, University of Oxford), awarded for: The Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science data driven policy interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Dr Sarah Spencer and Dr Nicola Delvino (Centre on Migration Policy and Society (COMPAS), School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford), awarded for: Partnership with European cities to change policy and practice on irregular and destitute migrants

The Highly Commended awardees will join the overall winners in a celebration of social sciences research impact at the O²RB Excellence in Impact Awards ceremony on 19 October 2021, live-streamed from Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History: https://www.socsci.ox.ac.uk/o2rbawards