About

President

 Delwar Akbar

  Associate Professor Delwar Akbar is a regional economists and a research leader in supply and value chain area. He has been working with rural and regional industries and businesses to improve their productivity and sustainability. His research during the last decade has focused predominantly on rural and regional economics, value chain analysis, property and health economics, economic impact assessment and regional development. Along with other researchers, he has received significant levels of funding support (about 7.5 million dollar) have been received through the Category 1-4 grants. He has integrated economic models with supply chain, services and planning models. Recently, he has been developing and testing collaborative business models that could boaster rural economic dynamics and international trade. Over his academic career, he has been involved with more than 60 research and consultancy projects, and published over 140 refereed papers and project reports.

Immediate Past President

 Rolfe Gerritsen

  Professor Rolf Gerritsen is currently a Professorial Research Fellow at Charles Darwin University. 

Rolf has taught at various universities, the longest period being a decade at ANU in the Graduate Program in Public Policy. He has also worked as Director of the Australian Centre for Regional and Local Government Studies, as a Ministerial staffer and ran his own research consultancy for a number of years. Between 2002 and 2006 he was Director Social/Economic Policy in the Chief Minister’s Department in Darwin. Rolf’s principal research interest is regional and northern development, with a focus on disadvantaged, remote and Indigenous areas. His secondary research area is government policy and service delivery. He is currently concentrating upon Indigenous peoples’ role in natural resource management and services.

Vice President Australia

Chloe Ward

  Dr Chloe Ward trained as a historian, and now works in economic development policy. Her research interests include 20th century British history, and the intersection between culture and politics. She is a former fellow in the EU Centre of Excellence at RMIT. When she isn’t podcasting, she can usually be found having strong opinions about things she knows nothing about, or walking her dog

Vice President New Zealand

 Michael Cameron

  Michael Cameron is an Associate Professor in Economics and Research Fellow in Te Ngira – Institute for Population Research at the University of Waikato. His current research interests include population, health and development issues (including the social impacts of alcohol outlet density, the measurement of population ageing, migration, health applications of non-market valuation and discrete choice modelling, and cost-effectiveness analysis of public health interventions), population modelling and stochastic modelling, financial literacy and economics education.

Secretary

 Vince Mangioni

  Associate Professor Vince Mangioni is Associate Professor in Property Economics and Development in the School of Built Environment UTS.

Vince's research focuses on land and property taxation, including local government revenue, rating and finance. He is an associate researcher at the Institute for  Public Policy and Governance where he participated in the ‘Destination 2036’ review of local government in NSW. He has authored a number of books, among the most recent is Land Tax in Australia: Fiscal Reform of Subnational Government’

Treasurer

 Greg Jones

  Dr Greg Jones is a Lecturer in Accounting in the School of Commerce of the University of Southern Queensland (Toowoomba campus).

Greg recently completed his PhD examining investment in CDOs by local government in NSW. His main research interests are local government, policy-making, financial reporting, asset management and auditing.                 

Public Officer

 Tony Sorensen

  Professor Tony Sorensen is Adjunct Professor in the School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences at the University of New England.

Tony has been involved in regional science over a very long career and is widely respected for his contributions to the discipline. As a futurist, he is interested in strategies to facilitate regional adaptation to as yet unknown business opportunities in a fast moving and globalised world of commerce and technology. Another research strand focuses on urban planning theory and the economics of Australia's residential property markets.

Council Member

 Khorshed Alam

Associate Professor Khorshed Alam is Associate Professor in Economics in the School of Commerce of the University of Southern Queensland (Toowoomba campus).

Khorshed's research interests are applied economic and policy analysis, health economics, agricultural, environmental and resource economics, technology adoption, digital economy and productivity, and regional economic development. He has undertaken a number of funded research projects, including 'Advancing women in rural enterprises (WiRE) through entrepreneurship', Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, Australian Government, 2017-18.

Maree Franettovich

When Maree Franettovich joined Council, she was as Associate Lecturer in the School of Business and Law at CQUniversity. Maree holds a Bachelor of Business (Management and Human Resources) and a Graduate Diploma of Management.

Maree is currently Regional Stakeholder Manager Mackay & Whitsundays at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland (CCIQ) in Mackay, Queensland. Maree is a Director of Business Services Network Pty Ltd, a boutique consultancy dedicated to tailored integrated strategic business solutions with a key focus on the right people management, developing managers and implementing specialised business frameworks. She is Deputy Chair and Company Secretary of the Community Bank Sarina.

Fiona Haslam McKenzie

Professor Fiona Haslam McKenzie is Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Western Australia. Her PhD awarded in 2003 is in political geography. 

Fiona has extensive experience in population and socio-economic change, housing, regional economic development and analysis of remote, regional and urban socio-economic indicators. She has published widely and undertaken work for the corporate and small business sectors both nationally and in Western Australia as well conducting work for all three tiers of government. Fiona was previously the Western Australian Director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute and subsequently led the CSIRO Minerals Down Under Regions in Transition Project. In 2012 she was appointed Principal Research Leader of the Regional Economies – Enduring Community Value from Mining program for the Remote Economic Participation Co-operative Research Centre until 2015, when she was appointed co-director of the Centre for Regional Development at the University of Western Australia.

Paul McPhee

Dr Paul McPhee is currently a Lecturer in Economics at Federation University. He has a PhD from the University of Wollongong.

Paul's professional experience includes: developing and analysing economic indicators, survey design and analysis within the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS); policy advice and economic analysis within the Federal treasury; serving on Federal Government Economic Forecasting Committees;, and various teaching and research positions at the universities of Queensland and Wollongong. Prior appointments include modelling various demand and supply induced policy simulations which facilitate the networking and information sharing of regional small to medium sized firms and exporters within New South Wales. 

 Tony O'Malley

Tony O'Malley is currently an Adjunct Research Fellow at University of South Australia, where he obtained a B Tech (Civil).

Tony’s interest in regions began during his MBA and PhD (Economics) studies at University of Alberta, and continued through a career as a management and economics consultant. He is a former Treasurer of ANZRSAI and was until the end of 2014, ANZRSAI Council’s representative in South Australia. Now resident in Melbourne, his research interest is in the role of transaction services as a determinant of regional disparities in income. 

 Azizur Rahman

Dr Azizur Rahman is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Statistics and the leader of Statistics and Data Mining Research Group at the Charles Sturt University (CSU).

Azizur’s doctoral research was supervised by Prof Ann Harding (National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, NATSEM) to develop alternative methods in microsimulation modelling technologies. These are very useful tools for socioeconomic policy analysis and evaluation. His book published in 2016 has contributed significantly to the field of small area estimation and microsimulation modelling. His research interests encompass issues in simple to multi-facet analyses in various fields ranging from the statistical sciences to the regional and environmental studies. He obtained the School of Computing and Mathematics Research Excellence Award 2018 at CSU.

 Yogi Vidyattama

Dr Yogi Vidyattama is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) in the nstitute for Governance and Policy Analysis at the University of Canberra.

Yogi has been with NATSEM since 2008 after having previously spent three years as a research assistant and tutor at the Research School of Pacific and Asia Studies and Crawford School, ANU (2005-2008) and five years at the Institute of Economic and Social Research, University of Indonesia (1999-2004). His main research interests are spatial impact of government policy; housing affordability; spatial distribution of inequality and disadvantage; and analysis of wealth and superannuation.