Speakers

Dr Alexeev is a Senior Research Fellow specializing in Health Economics at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney. His expertise lies in experimental and quasi-experimental research methods, particularly in robust evaluation of healthcare interventions. He has led the methodological aspects of influential research projects and published multiple papers in reputable interdisciplinary journals. Dr Alexeev actively contributes to academic and societal debates through peer review, conference participation, and engagement in seminars. His work has also garnered significant media coverage nationwide in Australia, reflecting the impact and relevance of his research.

Professor Janeen Baxter is an ARC Laureate Fellow and Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course in the Institute for Social Science Research at The University of Queensland. Her research focuses on gender inequality, family dynamics, life course and longitudinal studies. Janeen is an elected fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a member of the CEDA Council on Economic Policy. Janeen is a former member and Chair of the HILDA Expert Advisory Group.

Dr Bilgrami is a Research Fellow at the Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy and specialises in causal inference and policy evaluation. She has past experience in health economics consulting work (previously as a Manager at Deloitte) and academia. She is passionate about producing impactful research to improve decision making and health care policy design in Australia. Her research has been published in journals including Health Economics, Economic Record and Health Policy. She was awarded the 2020 Macquarie Business School Award for Research Excellence in Economics and was a Highly Commended Finalist for Excellence in Higher Degree Research 2021.

After completing his Bachelor of Commerce with Honours (First Class) in 2020, Ryan was offered a position at Curtin University’s PhD program with a scholarship from the Australian Research Council. Under the PhD supervision of Professor Rachel Ong ViforJ and Dr Hiroaki Suenaga, Ryan has co-authored an academic paper that Urban Studies Journal has accepted for publication on the effect of housing tenure status, as age income and location vary, on subjective wellbeing. Ryan has also co-authored the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute project, “The new normal: COVID-19 and changed patterns of dwelling demand and supply”, and the Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre 2023 Housing Affordability Report.

Yuyang Chen is a PhD candidate in economics and econometrics at the Faculty of Business, Government, and Law at the University of Canberra. He has a Bachelor of Management and a Master of Management. In 2017, he won the National Scholarship of China and the First Academic Prize of the Jilin University of Finance and Economics.

Yuyang was a volunteer language teacher and Assistant Principle and at Australian School of Contemporary Chinese in Canberra from 2018 to 2019. His PhD studies focus on the impact of informal childcare on the welfare of elders and their families both in Australian and Chinese contexts.

Dr Melek Cigdem-Bayram is an Economic Analyst and Advisor at Jesuit Social Services and an Honorary Fellow at the Melbourne Law School (University of Melbourne). Before joining Jesuit Social Services, Melek held Research Fellow positions at RMIT University and the Melbourne Institute. Melek is an applied economist with a long-standing interest in intergenerational wealth transfers and homeownership, wealth inequality, housing and homelessness and evaluation of social policies.

Erin is a Graduate Economist at the e61 Institute. Her research at the Institute thus far has explored topics related to social policy, structural policy, and labour economics. She holds a Bachelor of Economics (Honours) from the University of Technology Sydney where she earned First Class Honours and the University Medal in Economics.

Professor Mike Dockery is Principal Research Fellow with the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, Curtin University. His research focusses on improving labour market, education and wellbeing outcomes for marginalised groups within society, with much of his work based on analyses of panel data. Mike has produced seminal works on the positive effects of cultural engagement and identity on wellbeing for Indigenous Australians. Other areas of focus include the economics of education, subjective wellbeing (or ‘happiness’), and links between housing, health and socio-economic outcomes. Mike has published over 60 papers in national and international journals, plus numerous book chapters and monographs.

Dr Rubayyat Hashmi is a NHMRC grant-funded research fellow at the Australian Centre for Housing Research (ACHR), The University of Adelaide. Prior to joining ACHR, Dr Hashmi held academic and research appointments at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ) and American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB). He earned his PhD in health economics from the University of Southern Queensland in 2021. Rubayyat has broad research interests in health, society and welfare. Rubayyat’s work has been published in leading journals including PharmacoEconomics, Health Policy, Quality of Life Research, Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, PLoS ONE etc.

Thomas is a PhD candidate at Griffith University. His research is focused on the study of household finance, particularly with regard to young adults. Thomas' other research interests are in related sub-fields such as life-cycle models, saving decisions, income patterns, borrowing behaviour, and behavioural biases.

Josiah is a researcher at the Australian National University’s Tax and Transfers Institute. His research interests focus on using applied microeconomic techniques to understand trends in the Australian labour market and inequality. This has included work on the labour market effects of natural disasters on regional labour markets, and more recently has focused on the role of gender norms in contributing to remaining gender gaps in Australia.

Yue is an economist whose research focuses on macroeconomics, labor, and development. She received her PhD in economics at the University of Minnesota in 2022 and her bachelor's degree at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has been a Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR) since 2022.

Dr Ilyushina investigates the digital economy, AI and automated decision-making, and the impact they have on labour markets, skills and long-term staff wellbeing. Nataliya’s work delivers strategies for understanding the impacts of task automation, corporate structure and gender on labour markets and human resource management. Dr Ilyushina is a Research Fellow at the Blockchain Innovation Hub and ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society at RMIT University. She received her PhD in Health Economics from RMIT University. Her other qualifications include Master of Economics from Melbourne University, Master of Professional Accounting, Master of Commerce and Bachelor of Economics.

Santosh is the Research Head at James Cook University’s Murtupuni Research Centre for Rural and Remote Health. Santosh has previously worked at Swinburne University of Technology, Deakin University, University of Otago and National University of Singapore. She holds Honorary positions at The Australian National University, and at Deakin University.  She is a demographer and social epidemiologist with research interest in migrant health, ageing and health, and primary health care. Santosh holds a PhD in Demography from the Australian National University and a postgraduate diploma in Public Health from the University of Otago. She is Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Population Research, published by Springer.

Gianni La Cava is Research Director and Head of Academic Engagement at the e61 Institute. He previously held several senior positions at the Reserve Bank of Australia, including establishing and leading a research team – Micro Analysis and Data (MAD) – dedicated to examining macroeconomic issues using microeconomic data. He also worked at the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland. Gianni holds a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics and a Bachelor of Arts/Commerce from the University of Sydney. Gianni’s research focuses on answering big policy questions with micro data and covers topics such as housing, wellbeing and inequality.

Inga Laß  is Senior Researcher at the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB) in Wiesbaden, Germany, and head of the research group ‘Family’. She is also an Honorary Senior Fellow at the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Her research revolves around the interplay between employment, individual life courses, and family life, with a current focus on the effects of working from home on workers. Her work has been published in journals such as Journal of Marriage and Family, European Journal of Population, and Work, Employment and Society.

Dr Patricia S. Lavieri is a Lecturer in Transport Engineering at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her goal is to contribute to the development of more sustainable and equitable societies that leverage smart technologies. She earned her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and her background includes qualitative and quantitative research methods, particularly in the field of advanced discrete choice modelling. She has had high-impact contributions to the modelling of user preferences for emerging transport technologies and services, such as ride-hailing, bike-sharing, and electric, connected, and automated vehicles.

DongJu Lee is a research fellow jointly in the Sociology Department at the University of Melbourne and Centre for Social Impact at UNSW Business School. She received a PhD in Sociology from Harvard University, with her dissertation exploring how international non-governmental organisations facilitated the institutionalization of two seemingly contradictory reproductive policies – maternity protection and liberal abortion – among 189 countries during the twentieth century (1920-2014). DongJu has taught and conducted research in Australia for topics related to social policies, inequalities, not-for-profit organisations, survey methods, and quantitative analyses.

Jiwon is a Ph.D. student in Economics and an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at New York University. Her research primarily focuses on labor economics, with an emphasis on the economics of the household and gender. Previously, she worked as a research analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and as a research scholar at the Stanford Center for Health Policy. She received her Bachelor's degree in Economics from Pomona College, California.

Martina is a Postdoctoral Scholar at IZA and a perspective Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham. She graduated from MIT in June 2023.

Martina is a labor economist interested in gender and labor market institutions. She studies the causes of the motherhood penalty in the labor market: in her current projects with HILDA data she analyzes the impact of the Australian 2009 Fair Work Act on work arrangements and maternal labor supply, both from an occupational structure perspective and from an intrahousehold bargaining perspective.

In her second strand of research, she investigates how employment protection and collective bargaining shape firms’ choices and impact labor market inequality.

Francis Mitrou is Program Head, Population Health, and Team Head, Human Development and Community Wellbeing at Telethon Kids Institute (TKI), and Principal Research Fellow at The University of Western Australia. He is a Chief Investigator and UWA Node Director for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course, and Lead Investigator on an NHMRC Synergy Grant investigating Aboriginal health trajectories. Francis has over 25 years’ experience in social and epidemiological research with a focus on physical and mental health, Indigenous advancement, social disadvantage, economic evaluation, and life course trajectories of children and families.

Irma Mooi-Reci is a professor of sociology and social policy in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She is a leading expert in the field of labor market research and the study of life-course dynamics. She is internationally known for her research on the socioeconomic effects of joblessness and insecure work arrangements on workers and their families. Her recent research, funded by the Australian Research Council, focuses on the effect of nonstandard employment arrangements on fertility behavior. Her research has appeared in Human Relations, Social Forces, Gender & Society, European Sociological Review, and other academic journals.

Dr Richard Morris is a senior research scientist in the Faculty of Medicine & Health (Sydney Medical School), University of Sydney with a specialisation in modelling mental health and subjective wellbeing. His work uses large, population-based surveys (e.g., HILDA), routinely collected medical and health records (e.g., electronic medical records) and clinical data sets to improve public health and mental wellbeing for all Australians, and guide State and Federal government policy.

Ha Nguyen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Telethon Kids Institute. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the ARC Life Course Centre and an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Centre for Child Health Research, the University of Western Australia. His general research interests have focused on applied econometrics, particularly in the fields of health economics and labour economics. This includes work in economic and social policy evaluation, intergenerational transmission in health and human capital, child development, mental health and wellbeing, health insurance, health care, employment and labour market participation, and population ageing.

Lavinia is an economist and econometric modeller working on energy transitions research using regional and spatial data analysis to support strategic decisions. Her areas of focus include the regional development and regional prosperity implications of energy/primary industries (e.g. employment, regional product analysis); metrics and indicators for tracking success across policies implementation; strategic foresighting and scenarios projections development; consumer level analysis of energy use, access to renewables and energy inequity analysis. In addition to econometrics, she has a background in spatial (GIS) analysis and programming.

Ana is a Research Fellow at the Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research. She is also a Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course and a Research Affiliate at the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute (Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU). Her research fields are taxation, family economics, education economics, and social and economic disadvantage. Her current research focuses on the impact of student loans on post-schooling outcomes, the effect of childbirth on household income and poverty risk, and the revenue capacity of tax systems.

Kristin Snopkowski is an evolutionary anthropologist and human behavioral ecologist.  Her research examines the ways that evolutionary and environmental forces have shaped modern human behavior. By utilizing large demographic datasets and interview data, Kristin Snopkowski studies reproductive decision-making and how family cooperation and conflict impacts these reproductive decisions. Her research has also examined how family dynamics influence educational and mental health outcomes.

Annaelena Valentini is a PhD candidate in Economics at the Tuscan Universities (Universities of Florence, Pisa and Siena). Her broad research focus is on inequalities and social justice, studied with different approaches, including theoretical models and computer simulations, as well as empirical estimation of inequality of opportunities through Machine Learning algorithms.

She previously worked on childcare policies, human trafficking for sexual exploitation, and rehabilitative programs in jailhouses. She graduated in Economics and Business Administration at the University of Bari and she holds a MSc in Economics and Management of Government and International Organizations from Bocconi University.

Jane is a PhD Candidate at the Research School of Economics, Australian National University. She is an applied micro-economist, with particular interests in labour supply, inequality, household bargaining and how concepts from biological anthropology can help researchers understand time use. She is an experienced academic tutor and in 2020 was awarded an ANU Commendation for Excellence in Tutoring. She currently works at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, ensuring quality linkage and statistical disclosure control of government administrative and survey data. In 2021 she was awarded The Australian Statistician’s Award (Team category). She will be going on the academic job market in 2023/24.