Productivity Growth Program Director, Grattan Institute Jim Minifie directs the Grattan Institute's Productivity Growth Program, which is focused on policy reforms to drive Australian living standards. His team is currently focused on structural change in the Australian economy. Prior to joining Grattan in June 2012, Jim spent 13 years at the Boston Consulting Group, including seven years as Chief Economist for Australia and New Zealand. There he was responsible for leading the firm's thinking on economic challenges – including the global financial crisis, the resources boom and climate change – and their implications for Australian policymakers and corporate leaders. His clients included governments in Australia, Asia and the Middle East and firms in media, online marketplaces, financial services, agriculture, industrial goods, logistics, retail, and resources and commodities. Examples of his work include: Public policy and public economics: • Policy development: growth policy; development policies for middle income economies; foreign investment policy; • Policy assessment and cost-benefit analysis: assessment of industry development policies and transport infrastructure; climate change policy; energy asset privatisation; low-emissions energy finance; • Market and contract design: water markets; vocational education market design, energy infrastructure selection and finance design. Private sector strategy development: • Regulatory strategy: health insurance, resources, transport infrastructure, airlines; • Policy impact assessment and response development: trade policy, tax, R&D; • Pricing and contract design: media & marketplaces, finance, commodity exports; • Financial structuring and funding: cooperatives, financial crisis response in banking; • Governance reviews: cooperatives, vocational education, resource management; • Sustainability strategy development: retailing, resources. Jim has a PhD in applied economics from Stanford University and honours and masters degrees in economics from the University of Melbourne. His research focused on contracts, incentives, and taxation.
Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Columbia University I am a postdoctoral research fellow at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, working with the Center for Sustainable Urban Development. I use ethnography, focus groups, surveys, and experimental methods to examine the political conditions under which democratic activity and accountability develop in poor urban communities. I received my PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the department of political science in 2014. My dissertation received the 2014 African Politics Conference Group-Lynne Rienner Award for Best Dissertation in African Politics. My research has been funded by the Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, and the University of Wisconsin. I was a Research Associate at the Center for Democratic Development in Ghana in 2012. Prior to graduate school, I graduated with honors from Northwestern University and served as a Program Coordinator for the Illinois Education Foundation. During the academic year 2014-15, I was a Visiting Lecturer of Politics at Bates College. In 2016, I will be an Assistant Professor of Politics at University of San Francisco.
Associate Research Scholar, Center for Sustainable Urban Development, Columbia University Jacqueline Klopp is an Associate Research Scholar at the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia University and a Research Associate at the University of Nairobi Institute for Development Studies, Previously, she taught the politics of development at the School of International and Public Affairs for many years. A political scientist by training, her work focuses on the political processes around land-use, transportation, violence, displacement and planning in African cities. Klopp is the author of articles for Africa Today, African Studies Review, African Studies, Canadian Journal of African Studies, Comparative Politics, Forced Migration Review, Urban Forum, World Policy Review among others. Recently, she has been experimenting with creative urban mapping projects for both analysis and advocacy and is a founding member of the DigitalMatatus consortium which has produced the first open transit data and public transit map for Nairobi's quasi-formal "matatu" transit system. She helped start the blogs CairofromBelow and nairobiplanninginnovations.com to provide more grounded and open urban information to citizens. She is also a founder and Board member of the Internal Displacement Policy and Advocacy Center (IDPAC) based in Nakuru, Kenya. She is currently writing a book on the politics of planning in Nairobi. Klopp received her B.A. from Harvard University in Physics and her Ph.D. in Political Science from McGill University.
Research Fellow at Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University Jennifer is a Research Fellow at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University. Her current areas of research are: HIV, sexuality and gender. She also has a research background in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered parenting and family studies.
Senior Research Associate (Psychology), Lancaster University At the broadest level, my research is concerned with the cognitive and cultural factors that inform how human beings think about, create and communicate representations. In this regard, it cuts across both the humanities and the social sciences. Methodologically, I am very interested in how quantitative and experimental methods can be applied to qualitative cultural and linguistic data (and particularly to 'big' data). To date, I have published on a wide variety of subjects, including experimental psychology, literary studies, anthropology, cultural studies, mythology, social media and linguistics. I have graduate degrees in discourse linguistics, literary studies and philosophy; I have also held competitively awarded fellowships in the form of a Junior Research Fellowship (Linacre College, Oxford) and a Marie Curie Fellowship (Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford).
PhD candidate, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University Previously one of the Directors at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority; now completing a PhD at Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Townsville. Jon has 39 years of professional experience as a protected area planner and manager, 28 years of which were involved in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Between 1998-2003, Jon was the Director responsible for commencing and coordinating the Representative Areas Program (RAP), the major rezoning program undertaken for the entire Great Barrier Reef. For his efforts with RAP, Jon was awarded an Australian Public Service Medal (PSM) and a Smithsonian-Queensland Fellowship. Jon has also been heavily involved in World Heritage matters since 1999 and was one of Australia's formal appointees to the World Heritage Committee between 2007-11. Jon is the primary author of 12 book chapters or books (including the 'Guidelines for applying the IUCN Protected Area Management Categories to Marine Protected Areas') and has more than 50 peer-reviewed publications.
