Dr Weiping Shi (East China Normal University) and Dr Hong Lu (Chongqing College of Electronic Engineering) will visit IER week commencing 19 March to participate in a series of meetings and presentations in the area of vocational education and training.

Two articles from IER staff, Dr Michael Orton and Dr. Clare Lyonette, have been shortlisted for this year’s SAGE Prize for Innovation and Excellence, the winner of which will be announced at the BSA conference in April 2012. The prize is awarded annually to one paper in each of the BSA’s four prestigious journals: Cultural Sociology; Sociological Research Online; Sociology; and Work, Employment and Society.

The prize is awarded to the paper published in the previous year’s volume judged to represent innovation or excellence in the field. The IER nominations both appeared in Work, Employment and Society in the previous year and will be considered alongside three other short-listed articles. To find out more about the articles by Clare and Michael, see:

Clare Lyonette, Gayle Kaufman and Rosemary Crompton ‘We both need to work’: maternal employment, childcare and health care in Britain and the USA, Work, Employment and Society 25: 34-50.

Michael Orton Flourishing Lives: the capabilities approach as a framework for new thinking about employment, work and welfare in the 21st century, Work, Employment and Society 25: 352-60.

At the 14th AlmaLaurea conference, held at the university of La Sapienza in Rome on 8th March, Professor Kate Purcell was discussant for the main paper presented by professor Andrea Cammelli, Director of AlmaLaurea, discussing the findings of the 2011 survey and trends in the early graduate career transitions of Italian graduates from 64 universities, in the context of recession, global change and the complexities of the current European economy reporting the findings of the 14th Annual Survey. The conference is attended by a wide range of Italian and other European policymakers, academics and graduate employers, including with speakers from a range of countries: http://www.almalaurea.it/info/convegni/roma2012/

Many thanks for all your feedback about the Futuretrack study. Owing to popular demand, we have extended the survey until Tuesday 6 March.

IER's Bernard Casey gave a presentation at the conference "The Cyprus Economy at a Time of European Uncertainty: Managing Reform and Sustainability", organised by the Hellenic Observatory of the London School of Economics and held at LSE on 10-2-12. His talk on "The Fiscal Implications of Demographic Change" gave an overview of the challenges of addressing pension and care provision for Cyprus's ageing population. Other presenters at the event included the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism of the Republic of Cyprus, Prof. Chris Pissarides, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Economics, the head of sovereign debt rating for Europe, Middle East and Africa from Standard & Poor's, experts from the World Bank and the European Commission and academics from the University of Cyprus.