The Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES) is the is the main professional body for agricultural, environmental and development economists in Australia and New Zealand. In February, AARES held its first face-to-face conference since before COVID hit. (The last one was in Perth in early 2020, largely organised by CAED staff and students.)
AARES conferences are a great way of catching up with the latest research, developing skills and building networks. Some of the highlights are as follows.
A pre-conference workshop on capturing information about indigenous values for use in decision making about biodiversity was organised by UWA postgraduate researcher, Alaya Cotton-Spencer. It was a thought provoking session that brought together some of the biggest names in environmental valuation.
Congratulations to those who won awards at the conference:
Alex Hegarty won the first-time presenters award from a large a highly competitive field. She was up against 80 other people! She was attending the conference having won the AARES Undergraduate prize for Western Australia.
Jon Marx Sarmiento won an AARES ECR incentive grant to attend the conference and then was runner-up in the poster competition. Jon’s winning poster was related to his PhD thesis.
Disha Bose, was awarded the Donna Brennan travel award, in memory of former UWA staff member Donna Brennan. This award provides financial assistance to an international early-career researcher to bring them to the conference.
Former UWA student and research staff member, Nicki Dumbrell, won the award for the best PhD thesis, which she did at the University of Adelaide. Nicki is now working at CSIRO.
“It was great to be back at an in-person AARES conference again.” [Prof David Pannell]
"We received excellent feedback on the FBIP presentations and also a lot of interest in our research.” [A/Prof Fay Rola-Rubzen]
For more information, contact CAED member, Tammie Harold at tamara.harold@uwa.edu.au