Pilar Elizalde is Departmental Lecturer in Law and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and Associate Member at St Antony’s College. Her research centres on the promotion, contestation, and politicisation of human rights norms, particularly in the context of international organisations. Her research interests also include gender equality, civil society mobilisation, human rights indicators, data visualisation, and the use of multi-methods. 

Prior to joining the Blavatnik School of Government, Pilar was a Fellow in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where she has taught courses on genocide, foreign policy analysis, international institutions, and the situations of the International Criminal Court. 

Pilar holds a PhD in International Relations from LSE, an MA Theory and Practice of Human Rights (with Distinction) from the University of Essex, and a BA International Relations from Universidad de San Andrés (Argentina). She is also a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and has won the LSE Class Teacher Award in 2020 and 2021, and the BISA Award for Early Career Excellence in Teaching International Studies in 2022.

Her research and studies have been funded by the LSE PhD Studentship (2014-2018), the Chevening Scholarship (2012-2013), and the Beca San Andrés (2004-2007). In 2018 she was selected and granted a fellowship to take part in the Zurich Summer School for Women in Political Methodology.

Pilar has fifteen years’ experience in the human rights field, both as an academic and a practitioner in Latin America, having worked at the Observatory of Human Rights of the Upper House of the Argentine National Congress, the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), Amnesty International, and the Regional Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Buenos Aires. She was also a Lead Editor of the LSE Human Rights blog for two years (2014-2016).