The Economic Society has for many years run an Eminent Speaker series, bringing high-profile academics to Australia. The series has run in a limited form since Covid.

The Society would like to shift to a more collaborative model, in which it co-funds visitors to various Economic Departments. This will allow us to support universities to bring visitors they want, and to share the costs of bringing a visitor to Australia (and the time involved in entertaining a visitor).

In this new model, the Society will provide partial funding for a visit (usually no more than $3000 or $4000) in exchange for the visitor agreeing to give one evening lecture for the Economic Society on a topic that would be of interest to policymakers and/or business people. The lecture will take place in the same city as the host university. However, if the visitor agrees to give an evening talk in one of our smaller branches (South Australia, Tasmania, Western Australia) then we can contribute an additional $2000 to the costs of the visit (in addition to the cost of travel to the branch and accommodation there).  Any Society public lecture(s) would need to take place on a week night.

We look forward to a closer collaboration with our university departments. Please also reach out if you would like us to organise an event to promote a researcher’s work to policymakers.

The Eminent Speaker form takes 30 seconds to complete!  A small committee of academics and policymakers will review and decide on each application on a rolling basis. The committee will allocate the budget, prioritising speakers who are more eminent and/or policy-relevant.

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