New PhD students and visitors at GFAR

We have welcomed new PhD students and visitors at GFAR this semester. In this blog, they have each shared some information on their backgrounds and what they are looking forward to while they are here.

New PhD students

Bingjie Song joined GFAR to commence her PhD in August. Bingjie holds a Masters’ degree, majoring in Human Geography from Shaanxi Normal University and a Bachelors degree majoring in geographic information system (GIS) technology. To date, her research has concentrated on rural and agricultural development in China, with a focus on the rapid transformation of Chinese rural areas post-1978. This research has been presented at international conferences and is featured in refereed journals (four in English). Bingjie’s PhD research will be supervised by Associate Professor Alec Zuo, Professor Sarah Wheeler and Adjunct Professor Guy Robinson (School of Geography, The University of Adelaide).

Wenzhu Tang joined GFAR for his PhD in September. Wenzhu is returning to GFAR after completing a Masters in Global Food and Agricultural Business here in 2018. Wenzhu has academic backgrounds in Material Science and Engineering (with a degree from South China Agricultural University) and applied data science. His research interest and the scope of his PhD research includes the analysis of Chinese consumer patterns in new trade channels such as Daigou. His PhD research will be supervised by Dr Di Zeng and Associate Professor Alec Zuo.

We also look forward to welcoming Trang Nguyen to GFAR later in September to commence her PhD, with research aligned with the Fight Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre. Trang has previously completed her Masters at the Department of Agricultural Economics in National Taiwan University. Prior to joining GFAR, she worked as a research assistant for Academia Sinica at National Taiwan University for two years. Trang's PhD research will be supervised by Professor Wendy Umberger, Professor Sarah Wheeler and Dr Lenka Malek. 

Visitors

Luis Mateo Peinado is on a research internship at GFAR for three months (September to December 2019). While here, he is working with Dr Adam Loch on water rights, and market and transaction costs in the hyper-arid area of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Luis is a PhD candidate (Applied Economics) at the Universidad Católica del Norte, Chile and the Universidad de Oviedo, Spain. He is originally from Granada (Spain) and has been living in Antofagasta (Chile) for five years. Luis noted that it is an excellent opportunity to be at GFAR since the research centre is an international reference for research on water policy as well as in the design and operation of water markets. 

Carlos Barzola, is a PhD candidate at the Business, Management & Organisation group in the Wageningen School of Social Science at Wageningen University (Netherlands). His research interest involves multi-stakeholder platforms in the agri-food sector and the innovation of small farmers in emerging economies. His PhD focuses on the influence of multi-stakeholder platforms on small coffee farmers in Uganda and, farmer entrepreneurial orientation and their value network. While Carlos is visiting GFAR he will work with Dr Daniel Gregg, Dr Alexandra Peralta and Adjunct Professor Randy Stringer who work on the same coffee project in Uganda. While at GFAR for the next month, Carlos is looking forward to sharing his research interests and learning more about knowledge creation and implementation in agricultural systems.

Associate Professor Xin Chen arrived at GFAR in September to commence a one year visit. While here, Xin will work with Professor Mike Young on collaborative research related to carbon trading markets and energy economics. Xin is visiting from Xi’an International Studies University where she specialises in the field of environmental economics and teaches courses related to economics and finance.