La Chimia Annamaria
Professor Annamaria La Chimia LLB (La Sapienza, Rome) LLM and PhD (Nottingham) is Full Professor of Law and Development and Director of the Public Procurement Research Group at the School of Law University of Nottingham where she also leads the Humanitarian and Development Procurement Unit and the Procurement and Human Rights Unit (the latter with Dr Georgopolous). Professor La Chimia is now also Special Procurement Advisor for the EU external mission in Somalia (EUCAP Somalia) and she is a Fellow at Stellenbosch University. At the University of Nottingham Annamaria also leads the Rights and Justice Research Priority Area, an interdisciplinary network of researchers across the University. From 2017 to 2021 Annamaria also acted as the School's Equality Officer and Chair of the Equality and Diversity Committee (under her leadership the School obtain the first Athena Swan award for equality and diversity). Professor La Chimia's research has been funded by the British Academy (in 2009), the BA-Leverhulme (twice, first in 2017, then in 2020) and in numerous occasions by the University of Nottingham. In 2017 Annamaria was awarded (as Co-Investigator) a multimillion AHRC-GCRF 4-year grant to conduct research on aid, procurement and marine cultural heritage in East Africa. She has taught and has been visiting professor at a range of Universities and she has acted as expert advisor in the field of procurement for numerous national and international organizations, including the World Bank, the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), the UK Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), the European Commission, the NGO ActionAid, the Commonwealth Secretariat and OECD/SIGMA. In 2018 and 2020 Annamaria acted as lead international consultant for assessing the Afghanistan Procurement system following the MAPS II methodology (project financed by GIZ). She has trained procurement experts all around the world -most recently, in 2021, she has conducted training for procurement officials in the Caribbean as part of the World Bank professionalization programme. Professor La Chimia has published extensively in the area of aid effectiveness, food security, development aid procurement and procurement by multilateral and bilateral aid donors. More recently she has conducted research on procurement reforms in Italy and on procurement and COVID-19, publishing a seminal edited collection 'public procurement regulation in (a) crisis' (with Arrowsmith, Butler and Yukins). Her work has featured in International and European law reviews and in international edited collections. She is the author of Tied aid and Development Aid Procurement in the framework of EU and WTO Law: the imperative for Change, published by Hart Publishing in 2013, the leading monograph on this topic and she co-editor (with Trepte) of Public Procurement and Aid Effectiveness: the Journey so far (Hart 2019). In recognition of her work on food aid she was invited, in 2015, to join the Trans-Atlantic Food Assistance Dialogue (TAFAD) a group of NGOs and Academics that conduct research on food aid and food security and that is present, as observer, at the meetings of the Food Assistance Committee.