Jun 6

Malaysia's Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) visits UWA to deliver a collaborative international research program co-hosted by CAED

Last year our Centre signed a MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING with UiTM to enhance relations between the two universities by developing possibilities for research collaboration as well as other academic and cultural interactions. This is one of several international partnership activities that CAED has initiated as part of our international strategy.

Under this MOU, Associate Professor Fay Rola-Rubzen invited UiTM researchers to Australia to meet our staff and discuss potential research collaborations with CAED members and, more broadly, with other UWA researchers. It wasn't long before a 2-day international program on Navigating Shared Futures in Social Innovations, Management, Economics and Engineering (SiME'24) was established and subsequently delivered at UWA on 28th to 29th May, 2024.

The SiME'24 was successful in that over 100 research papers were accepted into the program from across 4 countries, and a delegation of over 60 participants attended the conference in Australia.

Day 1

The first day included a morning ceremony, with Professor Marit Kragt welcoming everyone to UWA, Professor Kay Dora Abd Ghani launching the Program, and Associate Professor Fay Rola-Rubzen providing the Keynote address.

After a gift exchange ceremony and a presentation from Professor Wan Liza Md Amin, the participants moved to an outdoor setting for morning tea before the commencement of the research seminars.

You can download the program booklet to view the topics and presenters from the two concurrent seminar sessions held at UWA and the online sessions for those presenting remotely.

At the end of each seminar, the researcher was presented with a Certificate. Our PhD students who presented papers included Oanh Nguyen, Putri Setyowati, Jon Sarmiento, and Ruixue Wang. UWA's Dr Alaya Spencer-Cotton Chaired one of parallel sessions that had a climate change and agricultural theme. At the end of the session, the best presentation was awarded by the Chair. Congratulations to Putri Setyowati for winning the Best Presenter Award in her group. Well done, Putri!

A big thank you to our student volunteers – Yadav Padhyoti, Putri Setyowati, Mahnaz Afsar, Eshrat Mahfuza, and Khanh Le, who assisted on the day.

There are more photos below that capture the spirit of the day.

Day 2

The second day was the UiTM-UWA Industry-Academic & Community Engagement workshop, which was more focussed on future collaborations between UiTM and UWA research staff. The main purpose was to introduce UiTM staff to our university, discuss some of our research activities, and hopefully find ways we could potentially collaborate through staff or student exchanges, joint research activities or student research project co-supervision.

We heard from the UWA Global Engagement Office and the SAGE's Head of School before handing the floor over to the UWA researchers to present on some recent research that might lend itself to collaborative activities. The following research ideas were presented:

The multifaceted role of biochar for agriculture and environment (Dr Nanthi Bolan)
Local knowledge and values for climate change adaptation (Dr Natasha Pauli)
Visual Legal Communication for Agriculture (Dr Camilla Baasch Andersen)
Silicon Shadows: Big Tech’s Corporate Strategies for Data Dominance and Regulatory Evasion (Heather Delfs)
Urban heat (Dr Bryan Boruff)
Productivity & Profitability analysis in agriculture (Dr Amin Mugera)
Agent-based and bioeconomic modelling for policy analysis (Dr Atakelty Hailu)

The UiTM visitors were very appreciative of listening to the research interests of the UWA staff and how it relates to their research areas at UiTM. They were able to engage with our staff over lunch and by the end of the day there were many emails exchanged to keep in contact and invitations to labs to learn more.

Incidentally, there was great interest in the research being conducted by UWA's Dr Camilla Baasch Andersen on using comics to communicate, and by way of example showed how the comics can present values and attributes. Dr Baasch Andersen is embarking on an agricultural project funded by DPIRD and is looking for collaboration with agricultural economists to improve communication with farmers. This presentation piqued the interest of both A/Prof Michael Burton and A/Prof Fay Rola-Rubzen!

Both universities recognised the benefits of collaboration and the potential it can have for significant impact on research and teaching outcomes. Everyone engaged in the workshop with the right mindset, and we extend our sincere thanks and appreciation to those who attended. We hope the workshop will be the start of some new research and academic collaborations.

Day 1 - welcome ceremony photos