Professor Lucie Cluver, Professor of Child and Family Social Work at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, has been appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the King’s Birthday Honours list 2025. The honour recognises her services to children’s wellbeing and to global public health.
Professor Lucie Cluver, also Honorary Professor in Psychiatry and Mental Health at the University of Cape Town and Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College, has led research to provide evidence to improve the lives of children and adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa for over 20 years.
From 2019-2024, she led the UKRI GCRF Accelerating Achievement for Africa's Adolescents Hub, a £20 million interdisciplinary research hub working to improve the lives of children and adolescents in resource-limited settings. In 2022 she became the co-Principal Investigator of the Global Parenting Initiative, a five-year collaboration of universities, foundations and charities which provides free support to parents to equip them with the knowledge and tools to prevent child sexual abuse, exploitation, and family violence.
During COVID-19, Professor Cluver co-led the COVID-19 Emergency Parenting Response with DSPI’s Professor Jamie Lachman to develop emergency parenting resources for lockdowns and school closures. Working with the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, UNODC, CDC, and PEPFAR, these resources reached over 210 million people in 198 countries and territories, and were used by 34 governments in their national COVID responses.
"In 2002, I was a social worker in South Africa, trying to help mothers and children who were dying of HIV/AIDS, in the days before lifechanging initiatives like PEPFAR and the Global Fund. I asked local charities what they needed, and to my astonishment they said ‘research’: they wanted to know what would be the most effective and affordable ways to protect children. Now we work with governments, UN agencies and donors to answer the same question, and find solutions for millions of children who deserve the best support," commented Professor Cluver.
"I am honoured and amazed at being given this award. Every impact that we have had is because of an incredible team – across Africa and the UK – who are dedicated to improving the lives of children. The University of Oxford gives us an amazing privilege: the academic freedom to pursue research that can directly help the most vulnerable. I’m lucky to be here."
Her impact on children’s wellbeing is exceptional and in recent years, she has been selected as a winner of: the European Research Council Public Engagement with Research Award 2024; Fellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences 2023; the University of Oxford Vice Chancellor’s Innovation Award 2022; the International AIDS Society Excellence in Research with Children Award 2022; the UK Research and Innovation Impact Award 2021; and the European Union Horizon 2020 Impact Award. In 2019, she was recognised as one of UKRI’s 15 Women with Impact in Research.
Professor Cluver has been a key member of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI) since 2001 when she joined to study for a Master’s in Social Work. In 2015 she became Professor of Child and Family Social Work with the Centre for Evidence-Based Social Intervention within DSPI, and co-leads a team that is based across the Universities of Cape Town and Oxford. In this role she works with a dedicated team of PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and colleagues on large-scale research that has a single goal: to put science in the service of the most vulnerable.
