Wellbeing, Health, and Human Behaviour Conference - Kyle Boutilier

The Wellbeing, Health, and Human Behaviour Conference aims to foster collaboration and advance scholarly discussions in behavioural and health economics by bringing together academics and PhD students from across the university and external institutions for a 2-day conference. Through in-depth discussions and extensive networking opportunities, this conference seeks to move the frontier in wellbeing-related research and offer mentorship and career growth opportunities for early career researchers. This interdisciplinary event involves participants from multiple departments and aligns with several themes of the spotlight.

The conference will be organised around 3-4 themes with both internal and external speakers and discussants, including PhD students. Each session will have a different theme with 1 keynote external speaker followed by 2-4 shorter internal presentations with discussants. Possible themes include wellbeing, population aging, and behavioural health, aligning with the spotlight’s themes. Networking is an important focus of the conference and we plan on having random seating at each meal to encourage participants to meet new people in different disciplines.

We sent out a survey to staff and students in the economics department and 21 people indicated that they were interested in this potential conference with a particular interest in a session on behavioural health. We also plan on inviting students and faculty from other departments (e.g., psychology) and using the spotlight’s communication channel to gather more ideas.

We expect to have approximately 40 delegates (with the goal of a 50-50 faculty to students/postdocs ratio), and plan to host the event at Scarman or Radcliffe in June. Once we secure funding, our next step is to book the venue and finalize the schedule. We will then invite researchers from across the university and beyond. Overall, this conference will engage a diverse academic audience and unite researchers working on similar topics.

Based on the project application, the main goal was to organise a 2-day conference around 3-4 themes/sessions, which was fully achieved. Other goals included the following:

• Attendance: 40 delegates (partially achieved)
  • Had 32 delegates and a number of faculty/PhD students (5-10) who stopped by for 1-2 sessions.
  • We could have had more delegates, but I reconfirmed attendance and removed those no longer able to come to ensure funds were used efficiently.
  • Most delegates were from the Department of Economics, but we had delegates from Liberal Arts, Mathematics of Systems, Engineering, Statistics, Business, and Medical (1 delegate from each of these other departments).
  • We also achieved a 50-50 split between faculty and PhD students/post-docs.
• Presentations: Internal and external speakers and discussants, including PhD students (achieved)
  • Each session had 1 keynote external speaker: Eric French (University of Cambridge), Monica Costa Dias (University of Bristol), Sam Burn (Imperial College Business School), and Dan Bennett (University of Southern California)
  • Each keynote speaker’s paper was discussed by PhD students or junior researchers.
  • We also had 2-4 internal presentations from Warwick-affiliated speakers (both faculty and PhD students).
• Networking: random seating at each meal to encourage participants to meet new people in different disciplines (mostly achieved)
  • I showed a list before each meal where delegates were randomly allocated to different groups.
  • Some delegates did not follow the meal list allocation, but I believe it still encouraged many to make new connections.

 

This is a news article I wrote about the conference: