Lucia Berro Pizzarossa

Lucía’s research lines are inspired by the ever-changing puzzle pieces that make up the global landscape of abortion, social movements, human rights, and the law. She generates new knowledge by exploring tensions between (legal) principles, values, norms, and international human rights standards, and by applying empirical-legal methods to understand the impact of laws on people’s trajectories to care, including in settings like Kenya, Uruguay, and Poland. Her most recent research projects included an analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on abortion in Africa, an evaluation of 10 years of implementation of the Uruguayan abortion law and an exploration of abortion activism in Africa. Lucía’s research agenda is built on partnerships with key stakeholders from the policy-making arena, social movements (various grassroots organizations), and international bodies (i.e. WHO). 

Her current British Academy project aims to uncover the entangled relationships between SMA and abortion law and regulation and, by so doing, to set the agenda for legal scholarship’s engagement with SMA. Applying a socio-legal approach that mixes qualitative and doctrinal legal analysis, Lucía will explore how abortion law and regulation impact SMA practices; how SMA practices affect abortion law and regulation; how SMA practices have impacted international human rights law and global health governance. This project builds on existing feminist work that challenges medico-legal models to suggest a new understanding of abortion care that confounds the paradigms on which existing legal frameworks are built. 

Lucía joined the University on a British Academy International Fellowship in 2024. Previously, Lucía was a British Academy Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and held post-doctoral positions at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at the University of Georgetown and the Faculty of Law at the University of Groningen.

She holds a Ph.D. in International Law from the University of Groningen, an MJur. from the University of Oxford, and an L.L.B. from the Universidad de la República in Uruguay. She also holds a post-graduate diploma in public policy design and a post-graduate diploma in women’s rights from Universidad Austral, Argentina.

In 2020, she was awarded the Rubicon grant by the Dutch Research Council (NOW) to undertake a two-year research project on sexual and reproductive rights. In 2019, she received a prize from the Dutch Network Women Professors (LNVH) under the Distinguished Women Scientists Fund. She has also obtained a British Academy Visiting Fellowship to the London School of Economics and an INSPIRE Grant from the European Union to develop part of her doctoral project at the Socio-Economic Right Project at the Dullah Omar Institute at the University of Western Cape in South Africa.

Lucía has previously worked with several grassroots organizations and has consulted for multilateral organizations including UNICEF, WHO, and the International Commission of Jurists.

Her academic work has been published in renowned peer-reviewed journals such as Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, Harvard Health and Human Rights, and BMC International Health and Human Rights.