What's On at UWA

Agricultural production in Ghana is mainly carried out by smallholder farmers on a subsistence basis. Smallholders constitute about 95% of the farming population and produce 80% of the annual output.

This study investigates the level of technical efficiency of farms using a sample of 294 households from the Upper East region of Ghana. Bootstrap DEA methods are used to estimate technical efficiency and the factors affecting efficiency are examined. This is the first study that uses bootstrap DEA methods in efficiency analysis of agriculture in Ghana.

Results from the application of the nonparametric DEA frontier models show that mean technical efficiency is low and there is significant variability in efficiency among the sample farms. The results imply that agricultural productivity can be increased substantially through improvement in technical efficiency.

From a policy point of view educational status and use of hired labour have been found to hold the greatest potential for improving technical efficiency in Ghanaian agriculture.

Keywords: Bootstrap DEA, Ghana, policy, smallholders, technical efficiency

Short bio,

Luke Abatania commenced his PhD research in the School of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Western Australia (UWA) in March 2009.

Abatania’s background is in Agricultural Economics and his research focus has been on the adoption and impact of improved technologies on farm household welfare. His current research interests are in productivity and an efficiency analysis of smallholder agricultural production.

Abatania has worked as an Agricultural Economist/Research Fellow at the following organisations in Ghana: Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (1992-2006), International Food Policy Research Institute (2006-2007), University of Ghana (2007-date). He was also a part-time lecturer at the University for Development Studies in Ghana (2002-2004).

Abatania holds a Master of Philosophy degree from the University of Ghana. He submitted a thesis to UWA in June 2013 for the award of a PhD degree and is currently awaiting the result.

PS* This seminar is free and open to the public & no RSVP required.

****All Welcome****

The task for the 10 finalists is to give an engaging talk on their PhD topic and it's significance in language that everyone can understand - in just 3 minutes. The audience will vote for its People's Choice.

Join the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery on Friday 26th July 2013 at 6pm for the opening of HERE&NOW13 - an exhibition of 11 Western Australian artists with disability.

Featured artists include Katrina Barber, Patrick Carter, Clive Collender, Aquinas Crowe, David Guhl, Tim Maley, Julian Poon, Jane Ryan, Robert Turpin, Lisa Uhl and Robin Warren.

HERE&NOW13 is presented in partnership with DADAA - a not-for-profit community arts and cultural development (CACD) organisation, focusing on creating significant positive social change and opportunities for people with a disability or a mental illness.

The Campus Partner for the exhibition is the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research.

The opening event is a great opportunity to hear about the exhibition, the partnerships and to meet with the artists and their mentors.

Light refreshments and drinks will be served.

Exhibition runs until 28 September 2013.

'Becoming an Engineer with UWA' info evening: Prospective students and their parents are invited to attend one of our info sessions to learn more about how to achieve an engineering career with UWA.

Free 50min Concert every Thursday during Semester at 1:10pm

Carrie McGee from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will present the annual Salek Minc Lecture for 2013 on Thursday 1 August 6pm at the UniClub Theatre Auditorium.

Carrie McGee and her colleagues at the MoMA have won international respect for their unique efforts to make the MoMA’s extensive resources, collection and programs accessible to visitors with disabilities.

In this lecture Carrie will discuss the development and outcomes of MoMA’s programs, including the world-renowned MoMA Alzheimer’s Project, in order to validate the notion that high quality arts programming positively impacts the physical, intellectual and emotional lives of those who participate.

The 2013 Salek Minc Lecture is co-presented by the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery and the Institute of Advanced Studies.

For more information visit: http://www.lwgallery.uwa.edu.au/publicprogram/salekminc/_nocache

As part of the HERE&NOW13 exhibition program, the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery is hosting the 'Disability and the Arts' Symposium on 2nd and 3rd of August.

This two-day symposium brings together a range of Western Australian organisations to discuss the importance of enabling people with disability access to, and involvement in the arts.

The symposium's keynote address will be given by Carrie McGee, Associate Educator for Community and Access Programs at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.

The program includes forums, panels and presentations by a broad range of artists, doctors, researchers, occupational therapists and arts administrators.

The campus partner for the symposium is the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research

Full list of speakers: http://www.lwgallery.uwa.edu.au/exhibitions/han13/symposium/speakers/_nocache

Visit the Symposium website for full program, list of speakers and to register: http://www.lwgallery.uwa.edu.au/exhibitions/han13/symposium

Julianne Baird has been hailed by the New York Times as ‘possessing a natural musicianship which engenders singing of supreme expressive beauty’. She is recognised internationally as a musician whose virtuosic and expressive vocal style has made her the ‘unsurpassed mistress of late Renaissance and Baroque music’ (Fanfare Magazine). Julianne Baird is Institute of Advanced Studies Professor-at-Large at the University of Western Australia in 2013. She will be joined by Paul Wright (violin), Suzanne Wijsman (cello), and Stewart Smith (harpsichord and organ), in a program of exquisite and enchanting Italian and German baroque music.

For Tickets: http://www.music.uwa.edu.au/concerts/keyed-up

A public lecture by Winthrop Professor Kadambot H.M Siddique, AM FTSE, Director, The UWA Institute of Agriculture.

Cost: Free, Register: http://2050food.eventbrite.com.au/#

Australia is currently a net food exporting country and about 70% of the food produced is exported. The presentation will cover our current food production, population growth and the impact of climate change on food production and export. In order to maintain Australia’s food production capacity in 2050, we must innovate, adopt and reform. We need to bring existing knowledge into use; build the capacity of institutions to undertake strategic research, development and extension; increase R, D & E investment; conduct research that meets the needs of agriculture and ensure research has impact and undertake microeconomic reform.

The Westerly Centre (UWA) and St George's College present the second Randolph Stow Memorial Lecture. Acclaimed poet, critic, novelist, essayist and editor of the recent volume of Randolph Stow's Selected Poetry, 'The Land's Meaning', John Kinsella will present this free public lecture. Wine and cheese will be served after the lecture. All welcome.

The Westerly Centre and St Georges College will present the second annual Randolph Stow memorial lecture on Tuesday the 6th of August.

Wine and cheese will be served after the lecture.

Guest speaker Professor John Kinsella, in association with the Westerly Centre for Australian Literature, will present the Randolph Stow Memorial Lecture and will talk about Randolph Stow’s Unselected Poetry. All are welcome to attend.

The UWA Student Guild has its 100th birthday this year. Prosh Days past, political militancy, protest marches, the campaign for female equality... it’s been quite a ride.

Among many other centenary events, we invite you to an exhibition called The Guild Museum; curated by 2011 Guild Councillor and curatorial studies student Chantelle Mitchell, assisted by passionate volunteers and the Guild Centenary Planning Committee.

You’ll see a selection of items (including photographs and memorabilia) reflecting 100 years of history of one of the longest-running student organisations in Australia.

Open to the public, with special opening times of 10am – 2pm over the weekend of 10-11 August, including the UWA Open Day on the Sunday.

Tours will be available daily at 1pm, starting at the Gallery. Bookings are essential. Contact [email protected] or phone (08) 6488 295.

A public lecture by David Konstan, Professor of Classics at New York University

Lucretius’ poem On Nature presents a detailed overview of ancient atomic physics, as developed within the school founded by Epicurus. It has some remarkable features: not just atoms, but tiny, non-detachable parts of atoms; a granular or quantized theory of time; odd orders of magnitude including infinitesimals and quasi-infinites. How does this theory stand up as a science, in modern terms? Is it in some sense a precursor of modern physics? Or does it perhaps offer an alternative to Newtonian mechanics, a kind of anticipation of post-modern physics? In the course of the lecture, parallels will be drawn with early modern literature and art and their relation to modernism and post-modernism.

Cost: free, but RSVP essential to http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/konstan

The Blush of the World: Bonnard’s Nudes and the Disembodied Look

This lecture sets out to provide a framework within which one might begin to look at Bonnard’s canvasses depicting his wife, Marthe, in the rituals of washing and bathing. It suggests that the most common way of understanding Bonnard’s depiction of his wife’s face – in ‘contre jour’ or shadow – fails to attend to something more obviously somatic: the blush. de Bolla will argue that Bonnard was deeply immersed in a looking technique that was implicated in the world. In effect the sighted viewer is placed in a reciprocal optical relationship with the object seen. When one begins to look with Bonnard the world feels the presence and pressure of our looking and Bonnard’s depictions ask us to acknowledge that. This lecture is part of a longer project on Bonnard and in the time for discussion and conversation de Bolla hopes to introduce some of its other themes and interests.

Peter de Bolla is Professor of Cultural History and Aesthetics at the University of Cambridge where he took both his BA and doctorate. He taught for five years in the English Department at the University of Geneva before returning to Cambridge in 1986. He is the author of six monographs including The Discourse of the Sublime: Readings in History, Aesthetics and the Subject (Basil Blackwell, 1989), The Education of the Eye: Painting, Landscape, and Architecture in Eighteenth-Century England (Stanford University Press, 2003), Art Matters (Harvard University Press, 2001) and the forthcoming The Architecture of Concepts: the Historical Formation of Human Rights (Fordham University Press, 2013).

Professor Ronald E Bontrop is an immunologist and editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Immunogenetics. He leads the Biomedical Primate Research Centre (BPRC) in Rijswijk, The Netherlands and is an expert in the field of comparative Immunogenetics.

Professor Bontrop’s current research programme deals with the genetics and evolution of immune system genes in various primate species and their co-evolution with pathogens. Special emphasis is placed on the genes of the Major Histocompatibility Complex as well as the Killer Cell Immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIR) gene complex.

Free 50min Concert every Thursday during Semester at 1:10pm

The Australian Academy of the Humanities Annual Lecture 2013, delivered by Professor Peter Hiscock FAHA, the Tom Austen Brown Professor of Australian Archaeology, The University of Sydney

Did Aboriginal people create an Eden-like estate or did they destroy the delicately balanced natural ecosystem they found in Australia? This talk critiques some of the latest theories and discoveries to reveal the intellectual biases and analytical constraints that underpin these debates. The magnitude of change that we can recognise in Aboriginal Australia prior to the arrival of Europeans challenges static and idealist stories of Australia’s human past.

The Academy gratefully acknowledges the support of the University of Western Australia.

Reception to follow at the Institute of Advanced Studies. RSVP by 31 July: [email protected]; Ph: 02-6125 9860

Come and find out about our undergraduate and postgraduate courses, career options, scholarship opportunities, our valuable research, community programs and facilities.

There's also residential college tours, hands-on activities, live music, entertainment, and plenty of fun activities for the whole family as we celebrate our 100th birthday.

We invite you to visit the Winthrop Hall Undercroft to help us celebrate our 100th birthday!

There will be something for everyone, including displays, memorabilia, historical photos, fun activities and LUMINOUSnight screenings in our special mini-theatrette.

Specialised stalls and displays include UWA Alumni; UWA Centenary; UWA Publishing; Association for the Blind of WA and Guide Dog puppies; LUMNINOUSnight photo exhibition and sale; Co-op Bookshop; Historical photo display; and fun instant photo booth!

Open all Open Day from 10am - 4pm.