Queen Elizabeth Prize for Higher and Further Education

Queen Elizabeth Prize

We are delighted to share that the Rights Lab and the University of Nottingham have been awarded a prestigious Queen Elizabeth Prize for Higher and Further Education for groundbreaking research tackling modern slavery.

The awards were announced at St James’s Palace on 25 November 2025. The prize citation is available at the https://royalanniversarytrust.org.uk/winners/university-of-nottingham/  and the university press release is https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/queen-elizabeth-prize-for-education-2025 

The award is a moment to celebrate the contemporary anti-slavery effort and its collaborations. Professor Zoe Trodd, Rights Lab Director, highlighted a global community of partners: “I am very proud of our Rights Lab team, the University of Nottingham, and our incredible partners. Working together with governments, businesses and NGOs, we have accelerated collaborative action.”

For example, the research has supported large-scale civil society response through robust prevalence estimates with International Justice Mission. It has transformed business responses through a sector-leading forced labour risk tool with Moody's Analytics. Recently the Rights Lab launched a focus on slavery in war, with a new Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War in partnership with King's College London.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: “From AI-powered language learning to.... tackling modern slavery. Your work is improving lives, growing our economy, and helping to shape a fairer, more prosperous future."

The Rights Lab’s research helps to tackle modern slavery and forced labour. For example, a flagship programme uses satellite data to map and measure modern slavery. Professor Doreen Boyd, Rights Lab Associate Director, said: “Country by country, we are finding the link between People and Pixels. Through new satellite remote sensing, machine learning and citizen science geospatial approaches, we are analysing forms of exploitation that traditional methods can’t access—bringing the power of Earth Observation data to action on the ground.”

First awarded in 1994, the Prizes are granted every two years by the Sovereign on the advice of the Prime Minister following a rigorous and independent process of review carried out by the independent charity the Royal Anniversary Trust.