Eleni Katsampouka awarded Subedi Prize for Best Doctoral Dissertation 2020-21

The Faculty welcomes the news that Dr Eleni Katsampouka (PhD, Mansfield College, and now Fellow and Lecturer in Law, Christ's College) has been awarded the Oxford Law Faculty Subedi Prize for best doctoral dissertation in the 2020-21 academic year.

The Subedi Prize which was established in 2019 is awarded to the thesis that, in the opinion of the judges, makes the most exciting original contribution to the relevant field of scholarship and is best-crafted in terms of organisation, style and presentation.

The prize for the 2020-21 academic year was awarded to Eleni for her thesis Rethinking Punitive Damages. This ground-breaking project offers the first full-length treatment of the English law on punitive damages. The project uses both classical legal analysis and empirical methods to provide the first comprehensive account of how punitive damages are used in practice. This research challenges our thinking about the use of punitive damages by dispelling a number of common misconceptions. The thesis then develops a normative account of punitive damages which, grounded as it is in the most comprehensive account of the practice, is likely to have significant impact on future judicial decision-making.

On hearing she had won the prize, Eleni said:

"It is an immense honour to receive the Subedi Prize for best doctoral dissertation. I would like to thank my friends, mentors and supervisor for their support, and, of course, my examiners Lord Andrew Burrows and Mr Nicholas McBride for their invaluable feedback and support."

Professor Mindy Chen-Wishart, Dean of the Oxford Faculty of Law, said:

"We are absolutely delighted to award the Subedi Prize for the Law Faculty’s best DPhil thesis in 2020-21 to Dr Eleni Katsampouka. Once again, we had an extremely strong field of outstanding dissertations to consider. It was especially inspiring to see so many strong projects coming to fruition given the extraordinary challenges faced by our community at that time. We are extremely grateful to Professor Subedi for funding this prize. Many congratulations to Eleni and her supervisor Professor James Goudkamp!"

Eleni intends to publish her doctoral thesis as a book in due course.

This story has been adapted from the Oxford Law Faculty site.