Hi, and thanks for visiting my website! Follow the links above for research, other writing, or course materials, or just keep reading if you want to learn a bit more about me.

I am the Deputy Director of the Development Policy Centre at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University. My research lies at the intersection of development economics, labour economics, international trade, and the environment, and I mostly work on Indonesia, Australia, and the Pacific. My primary responsibility is being the Crawford organisational lead and the thematic lead for migration research of the Australian Government’s Pacific Research Program. Under that, I’m a principal investigator of the Pacific Labour Mobility Survey, the Small Firm Diaries Fiji, and the Remittance Diaries, among other smaller projects.

I’m also associated with the MIT Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), Innovations for Poverty Action, the ANU Migration Hub, and the Arndt-Corden Department of Economics, where I convene two graduate research courses each year, supervise masters and PhD students, and co-convene the ACDE Seminars. Please let me know if you plan to visit Canberra and would like a slot. Other things that keep me busy include being a member of the Asia Pacific and Business Delegated Ethics Research Committee, associate editor of Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies and Asia-Pacific Economic Literature (the Crawford School’s two main journals), editor of the Development Policy Centre Discussion Papers (our centre’s peer-reviewed pre-print series), and co-convening the Pacific Update (in Suva every two years).

I returned to the ANU in 2019 from academic appointments in the Department of Economics at Dartmouth College and the Department of Earth System Science and the Centre on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University. I worked in the Australian Government—mostly on federal budgets, school funding reforms, social investment, and impact evaluation policy—global development, finance, and other odd jobs before that.

[ANU faculty page] [Google Scholar page] [CV]

I am a single parent with two amazing daughters, Fleur and Willa. Both were born in the US during my postdoc time. I was born in Sydney, but did most of my growing up in Brisbane. My parents moved to Australia from Northern Ireland just before I was born. Both didn’t go to uni, so I’m technically a “first-gen”, but that’s not particularly novel here.

I am very happy to talk to colleagues and students about going from policy to academia, balancing (single) parenting with study or work, neurodiversity (I’m a recent late/adult ADHD diagnosis) and mental health especially around that, or any of my other non-linear journeys. Just reach out.

Contact

on campus in Old Canberra House (until we move back to 7 Liversidge Street)

ryan dot edwards at anu dot edu dot au

ryanbarclayedwards at geemail dot com

socials below