On the occasion of the 19th ILERA World Congress, Lund, the second Academic Excellence Award was awarded posthumously to Professor William Brown, Emeritus Professor of Industrial Relations, University of Cambridge and former Master of Darwin College, Cambridge.

On the occasion of the 18th ILERA World Congress, Seoul, Republic of Korea, the first Academic Excellence Award was awarded to Professor Thomas Kochan, Professor and Co-Director at the MIT Sloan Institute for Work and Employment Research