Dr Veronika Fikfak has been awarded a Future Research Leaders grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
Her project, entitled 'What Price for Human Rights: Compensating human rights violations', will seek to understand how the European Court of Human Rights determines compensation in human rights claims. The project will use quantitative and qualitative research methods to analyse the jurisprudence of the European Court in order to discern the legal principles from its practice. Building on Dr Fikfak’s previous work at the European Court of Human Rights and at the Law Commission for England and Wales, the aim is to critically assess the Court’s role in awarding compensation for human rights violations. The project therefore brings together academics (most notably Professor David Feldman, and Professor Mandeep Dhami of Middlesex University), practitioners, and domestic and international judges.
The ESRC praised her project proposal as ‘highly innovative’, ‘impressive and imaginative’ and as ‘filling a real gap in a crucial aspect of human rights law’. Three reviewers gave the project the maximum mark of ‘outstanding’. They were unanimous that the impact ‘will be very considerable – and will extend across the 47 states of the Council of Europe, and further afield’. The project will start in January 2016 and run for three years.
The Future Research Leaders scheme is designed to enable outstanding early-career social scientists to become the future world leaders in their field. The call is open to high-quality candidates from anywhere in the world who have a maximum of four years postdoctoral experience and the support of an eligible UK research organisation. This year, the ESRC received 277 applications and awarded fewer than forty grants.
