Professor Abi Adams-Prassl among four Oxford researchers to win 2022 Philip Leverhulme prizes

Professor Abi Adams-Prassl Awarded by the Leverhulme Trust, Philip Leverhulme Prizes recognise the achievement of outstanding research scholars whose future career is exceptionally promising, and whose work has made original and significant contributions to knowledge as well as shown sustained international impact.

 

 

Only 30 prizes are awarded throughout the UK each year and the four Oxford winners come from the three eligible divisions: Humanities; Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences (MPLS); and Social Sciences. Each prize winner receives £100,000 which can be used for any purpose related to the advancement of their research.

The Social Sciences Division is represented among the prize-winners by Abi Adams-Prassl, Professor and Associate Head (External Engagement) for the Department of Economics. Abi's research develops new empirical techniques and harnesses new sources of data to understand the sources and consequences of inequality in the labour market and beyond. Her current work includes projects using job vacancy text to provide new insights on changing employment contracts and diversity in the workplace, with a focus on understanding why gender inequalities persist. She intends to use the prize to support new collaborations and to hire an early career researcher at Oxford to help drive forward the next phase of her work.

Professor Adams-Prassl commented:

I am honoured and delighted to win the Philip Leverhulme Prize! The prize will allow me to develop a new agenda uniting my research on gender inequality with that on flexible work arrangements and natural language processing of job advert text. Of course, research is never a lone endeavour. I'm so grateful for the supportive research environment and culture at the Department of Economics and my brilliant co-authors without whom this work would not be possible.

Professor Heather Viles, Associate Head of the Social Sciences Division (Research) said:

I'm thrilled to congratulate Professor Adams-Prassl on receipt of this prestigious award and such deserved recognition of her outstanding work. The field of labour economics is of critical importance - now more than ever - and Abi's extensive work in the field, and in applied microeconometrics, highlight the important role of the social sciences in tackling society's most urgent and complex challenges.

Head of Economics, Hamish Low commented:

The Prize is well deserved recognition of the truly outstanding work that Abi has done. Her work is changing how we think about behaviour within families and about how economic decisions impact gender inequality. Abi’s work has both depth and impact. She is an inspiration to current and future generations of economists.

The three other 2022 prize recipients from the University of Oxford are:

  • Professor Sebastian Bonilla, Department of Materials, University of Oxford for his work on semiconductor optoelectronic materials and devices. (Engineering Prize)
  • Dr Harrison Steel, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford for his work on engineering new biotechnologies that combine the strengths of synthetic biology, robotics, control     engineering, and artificial intelligence (Engineering Prize)
  • Professor Sam Wolfe, Faculty of Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics, University of Oxford for his work on French and romance linguistics. (Languages and Literatures Prize).