Professor Rob Wilson is giving a public lecture on “Skills Anticipation in Europe” at Monash University, Melbourne, on Tuesday 2 August 2011. He is currently visiting the Centre of Policy Studies (Faculty of Business and Economics) as part of a collaborative research project on Anticipating Future Skill Needs, funded by the Monash-Warwick Strategic Funding Initiative. The public lecture is hosted by the Centre of Policy Studies, the Centre for the Economics of Education and Training (Faculty of Education) and Skills Victoria (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development)

Professor Rob Wilson is organising a 1 day International Symposium on Employment and Skills Forecasting to be held at the University of Warwick on 29 September 2011. Participants at the Symposium will be actively involved in skills/employment forecasting in their respective countries.

The event will focus on an international comparison of approaches to labour market assessment and skills forecasting, with inputs from those with hands-on experience, and who can speak authoritatively (and critically) about the strengths and weakness of the various approaches adopted across the world, and the lessons they have learned over the past 20 years.

Attendance at the Symposium is by invitation only. For further information, please contact Rob Wilson (r.a.wilson@warwick.ac.uk)

Rob Wilson has successfully bid for a Research Development Award from the Monash-Warwick Strategic Funding Initiative for Joint Research and Education.  The application was made jointly with Tony Meagher from the Centre for Policy Studies at Monash.  The award will support research activities between Warwick and Monash to allow researchers from both institutions to investigate the scope for mutual learning and build on their existing strengths in labour market forecasting.  They will undertake a project to bring together their individual approaches to forecasting which have developed along largely parallel lines but have rarely been integrated or compared in detail.

Details of findings from the BIMCO/ISF Manpower 2010 Update have been presented at a meeting of the International Maritime Organisation Maritime Safety Committee in London (30 November).  The findings are based on data provided by governments, shipping companies and crewing experts, and also incorporate the views and perceptions of senior executives in shipping companies and maritime administrations. The statistical analysis was carried out, as in previous studies, by the Warwick Institute for Employment Research in the UK and this year, for the first time, from Dalian Maritime University in China which has helped obtain input from Asian countries where it had previously been difficult to obtain definitive data.

Dr Ben Kriechel is researcher at the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) in the Netherlands.  He has been project leader for several labour market research projects both nationally and internationally.  Dr Kriechel is visiting IER from 17-19 August working with Professor Rob Wilson on the Cedefop Forecasting Framework project.