2023 Lifetime Achievement Award

The Labor and Employment Relations Association Lifetime Achievement Award is a capstone achievement for lifelong contributors to the field of Industrial Relations and Human Resources, from all perspectives. This award was established in 2000, and awardees are recognized at the LERA Annual Meeting, in conjunction with the Presidential Luncheon.

2023 LERA Fellow Awards (Academic and Practitioner)

The Labor and Employment Relations Association annually bestows the LERA Fellows Award. The LERA Fellows designation is meant to recognize scholars and practitioners who have made contributions of unusual distinction to the field and have been in the profession and field for longer than ten years. The selection committee for the Fellow scholar title considered contributions from all disciplines such as Industrial Relations, Labor Law, Economics, Human Resources, Business, Sociology, Political Science, and Organizational Behavior.

2023 Academic Fellows

2023 Practitioner Fellows

Ana Avendaño
CUNY Law

2023 John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Awards

The Labor and Employment Relations Association annually recognizes outstanding academic contributions to research by recent entrants to the field (recent is defined as receiving terminal degree within the last ten years) with the John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Awards. One award recognizes the research contributions of international and/or comparative labor and employment research, and one award recognizes the research addressing industrial relations/employment issues of national significance.

2023 LERA Outstanding Practitioner Award

The Labor and Employment Relations Association annually confers the LERA Outstanding Practitioner Award. This award recognizes a distinguished practitioner for unique contributions to labor and employment relations practice over her/his career, consistent with the values and the mission of the LERA.

Betty Widgeon
Widgeon Dispute Resolution, PLC

2023 James G. Scoville Best International/ Comparative IR/HR Paper Award

The Labor and Employment Relations Association annually selects the most outstanding international and comparative employment issues paper as the winner of the James G. Scoville Best International Paper Award, which carries a cash prize. The award was established in conjunction with the Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies at the University of Minnesota to honor retiring professor and long-time member of the LERA, James G. Scoville. Eligible published papers on international and comparative employment issues are considered, including those with empirical material on employment issues from two or more countries, that examine transnational employment-relations phenomena, or that make theoretical contributions using empirical material from a single country with implicit international comparisons. 

Ryan Lamare
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

John W. Budd
University of Minnesota

Shahzad Uddin
University of Essex

2023 Kenneth May Media Award

The Labor and Employment Relations Association annually recognizes superior reporting regarding issues of importance to our labor-management community including academics, practitioners, industries, and dispute resolution professionals. This award carries the distinction of the recipient being invited to present at the LERA Annual Meeting on their journalistic body of work.

Daniel J.B. Mitchell
University of California, Los Angeles

Stuart Basefsky
Cornell University

David Moberg 
In These Times (posthumous)

2023 Thomas A. Kochan & Stephen R. Sleigh Best Dissertation Award

The Labor and Employment Relations Association has established an annual competition for post-doctoral students in the field of industrial relations or related fields such as history, political science, economics, sociology, etc., as long as they are broadly related to employment relations as reflected in the publications and membership of the LERA. The purpose is twofold: (1) to stimulate greater awareness and interest among doctoral students at colleges and universities of the field of industrial relations, and (2) to provide a vehicle by which an outstanding thesis by a doctoral student can be made more widely known to scholars in the field. Each year, the Thomas A. Kochan & Stephen R. Sleigh Best Dissertation Award committee reads thousands of pages of dissertations and determines which papers are the most significant contributions to the body of research in the field.

Kourtney Koebel
“Three Essays on the Social Determinants of Labour Supply”

2023 Susan C. Eaton Research Grant Award

This award is granted bi-annually to the most promising and relevant proposal for research or research-in-action consistent with the values and principles of the work of Susan C. Eaton and that best honors her legacy as an outstanding scholar-practitioner.

Adam Schoenbachler
Vanderbilt University