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CONTINUING OUR GLOBAL REACH In 2020, our research-driven engagement activities shifted to virtual webinars, predominantly led by two of our research centres – the Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability (CDES) and the Centre for Global Business (CGB).
Collectively the two centres ran more than 70 webinars attended by more than 6,000 participants from 38 countries around the world. CDES webinars included a special global panel discussion to address the huge economic and social ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic and the priorities for the evolving policy response, with a focus on developing countries. Guests included Chief Scientist for the World Health Organization (WHO) Dr Soumya Swaminathan who discussed global epidemiological scenarios, challenges and policy priorities. Other notable CDES webinars included renowned global development economist Professor Jeffrey D Sachs, from Columbia University, who unpacked the policy failures of the United States in tackling the COVID-19 crisis, and outlined how AsiaPacific countries including Australia dealt with the pandemic in a way that has set up the region to lead the economic recovery. In June, CDES welcomed economists Dr David Dawe, Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations and Professor Madhura Swaminathan, Head of the
Economic Analysis Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore, together with nutritionist Dr Marie T. Ruel, Director of the Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division at the WHO’s International Food Policy Research Institute, to discuss how COVID-19 has disrupted the global food supply chain. Among the webinars conducted by the CGB were ‘Building a New Social Contract: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and Renewed Worker Activism’, with guest speaker Professor Thomas A Kochan, George Maverick Bunker Professor and Co-Director of the MIT Sloan Institute for Work and Employment Research at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Announcing the International Consortium for Values-Based Governance (ICVG), CGB hosted Professor Colin Mayer, Peter Moores, Professor of Management Studies at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, who discussed values-based governance as a necessary substitute to the “onesize-fits-all” approach that has dominated governance research, practice and policy to date.
2020 COVID-19 WEBINARS Watch a compilation of this highly successful CDES series
