Melissa Leach has been appointed as a CBE for services to Social Science, in the Queen’s Birthday 2017 Honours List.  This major honour is conferred by the Queen and on the advice of Government in recognition of significant achievements in science and medicine, charitable work, business, sport and public service.

Melissa is director of the Institute of Development Studies and co-founded the ESRC STEPS Centre in 2006. Her CBE recognises her distinguished contribution to the social science discipline.  Examples include her work with the STEPS Centre, with its pioneering pathways approach to innovation, sustainability and development issues, and her leadership of the Ebola Response Anthropology Platform (ERAP) and the related Ebola: lessons for development initiatives, which last year won the prestigious Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Outstanding International Impact Prize for their rapid and effective response to the Ebola epidemic. She was also the lead social scientist in the UK and WHO Ebola scientific advisory committees during 2014-15.

This story was updated on 21 June 2017 to clarify Prof Leach’s role as co-founder of the STEPS Centre, which is a collaboration between IDS and the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex.