Join us at an exclusive Australian event exploring 'Diversity in Economics: Challenges and Rewards', featuring internationally renowned economist Professor Shelly Lundberg, in conversation with Professor Verity Firth, at UTS Business School on Monday 4 September.

The lack of diversity in economics studies and the profession is a pressing issue in Australia. With approximately twice as many males studying economics compared to females in high school and university, and a disproportionate representation of students from high socio-economic backgrounds in tertiary economics courses, addressing this imbalance is crucial.

Shelly Lundberg is regarded as one of the world's leading demographic economists, and a global leader in the field of in gender economics. She is Distinguished Professor of Economics and the Leonard Broom Professor of Demography at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Shelly will be sharing valuable insights into the importance and challenges of promoting diversity in economics and policy-making, and discover the potential benefits it brings to individuals, institutions, and society as a whole, in conversation with The Hon Verity Firth, AM, UTS Pro Vice-Chancellor (Social Justice and Inclusion).

The event is a hybrid event, so please indicate when registered if you will be attending in person, or online (Livestream via Zoom).

This event is presented by UTS Business School in partnership with the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Women in Economics Network.

Shelly Lundberg is Distinguished Professor of Economics and the Leonard Broom Professor of Demography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association, Fellow and past President of the Society of Labor Economists, a past President of the European Society of Population Economics and a Research Fellow at IZA. She served as Chair of the AEA’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession from 2016 to 2018 and as AEA Vice-President in 2021.

Lundberg’s research is focused in labor economics, demographic economics, and the economics of the family, including issues such as discrimination, inequality, family decision-making and the intra-household allocation of resources. Projects in recent years include studies of decision-making by children, the effects of child gender on parental behavior, the location decisions of married couples, the impact of government-provided care for the elderly on the labor supply of adult children, the economic returns to psychosocial traits, and the gender gap in educational attainment. Recently, she has written about the barriers to increasing women’s participation in the economics profession and on gender economics more broadly.

Lundberg received her Bachelor’s degree at the University of British Columbia and her Ph.D in Economics from Northwestern University in 1981.

The Hon. Professor Verity Firth AM is the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Social Justice and Inclusion) at UTS. She served as Minister for Education and Training in New South Wales (2008–2011) and NSW Minister for Women (2007–2009). After leaving office, Verity was the Chief Executive of the Public Education Foundation.

is the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Social Justice and Inclusion) at UTS, where she leads the Centre for Social Justice & Inclusion, aimed at channelling the university’s resources to remove barriers to education, empower communities, increase diversity and inclusion, and advocate for social justice.

Verity has over fifteen years' experience at the highest levels of government and the not-for-profit sector in Australia. She served as the Minister for Education and Training in New South Wales (2008-2011) and then as the Chief Executive of the Public Education Foundation. As Minister for Education and Training, she focussed on equity in education and how to best address educational disadvantage in low socio-economic communities, including rural and remote indigenous communities.
Before her parliamentary career, she worked as a lawyer and was Deputy Lord Mayor of the City of Sydney.

Professor Peter Siminski is the Head of the Economics Department at UTS. His research is in Applied Microeconomics and Microeconometrics, in the fields of inequality and economic mobility, education, health, labour and public economics. Much of his work applies modern impact evaluation techniques to estimate the causal effects of Australian government policies and programs on people’s lives. The measurement of inequality and inter-generational economic mobility is a key theme of his work. He has published in leading economics journals such as the American Economic Review, AEJ: Applied Economics, the Journal of Labor Economics, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. He is Associate Editor of the Economic Record and is on the Editorial Board of the Economics of Education Review