Research Symposium in Lilongwe, Malawi

Au­gust 2018: The Re­search Sym­po­sium was aimed to share knowl­edge from re­search on child well-be­ing and de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing rig­or­ous re­search us­ing ran­dom­ized con­trol tri­al and lon­gi­tu­di­nal stud­ies. The event was part of a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Zurich, UNICEF and the Swiss De­vel­op­ment Agency.

Re­searchers from the Cen­ter for Child Well-be­ing and De­vel­op­ment pre­sent­ed and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Re­search Sym­po­sium at the Bin­gu In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence Cen­ter (BICC), or­ga­nized by UNICEF and held in Li­long­we, Malawi on Au­gust 30 and 31, 2018.

Dur­ing the sym­po­sium, Pro­fes­sors Ernst Fehr and Guil­herme Lic­hand gave key lec­tures on be­hav­ioral eco­nom­ics and tech­nol­o­gy, re­spec­tive­ly. Nicoló Tomasel­li, the Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of the Cen­ter for Child Well-be­ing and De­vel­op­ment and three re­searchers of the cen­ter –Si­mon Hän­ni, Oni­cio Leal and Juli­ette Thibaud-, also par­tic­i­pat­ed in the event.

The sym­po­sium in­clud­ed par­al­lel ses­sions with pre­sen­ta­tions of re­search pa­pers on child de­vel­op­ment from schol­ars from Swiss and African Uni­ver­si­ties. The event was at­tend­ed by mem­bers of UNICEF, the gov­ern­ment, de­vel­op­ment part­ners, acad­e­mia, civ­il so­ci­ety and in­ter­na­tion­al guests.

The pre­sen­ta­tion of re­search projects us­ing ran­dom­ized con­trol tri­al (RCT) and lon­gi­tu­di­nal stud­ies was par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant, since the De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Zürich and UNICEF plan to em­bark on an 18-year lon­gi­tu­di­nal pan­el study, star­ing in 2019.

The field­trip to Malawi was also fruit­ful for CCWD team mem­bers to pi­lot re­search projects in the Ka­sun­gu area.