DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE

Over the last year, CDES has been very successful in extending its work on education and health to address the evolving issues due to COVID-19. Our researchers have also now been considerably engaged in research on climate change and gender. CDES will lead research work using field experiments to understand what works in addressing violence against women. The research will be a long-term collaboration with partner countries in Indo-Pacific regions – Indonesia, Fiji and Vietnam, as part of a new Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW)

Last year was also our best year in attracting large external research funding to date. We are now working closely with different international agencies such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank on various economic and social policy issues in many countries. These issues include poverty, inequality, climate change, education and health.

For the third year in a row, we were delighted to have a Nobel laureate as our distinguished guest for our annual public lecture. In November 2022, we were privileged to host Professor Michael Kremer. We also continued our successful webinar series focusing on policy issues related to COVID-19. We have also continued our weekly academic seminar series in collaboration with the department of economics.

We continue to grow the list of our resident and non-resident fellows. I invite you and your network to join us

We are organizing the Prato Conference after a gap of three years due to COVID-19. The conference is now scheduled to be 29-30 June 2023, followed by summer school for PhD students in collaboration with Italian Development Economic Association. We hope you will submit your paper for the conference. The call is out now

As part of extending our teaching portfolio, we are starting a new course at the Masters level on Costbenefit analysis and economic decision making. This is on top of our current courses on Poverty, Inequality and Opportunity; Field Experiments for Social and Public Policy; and Macroeconomic Theory and Policy for Developing Countries.

I look forward to seeing you in person this year as we are now doing most of our activities in person beginning from this year.

Warm wishes for a wonderful year ahead,

Professor Asad Islam Director, Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability (CDES), Monash Business School