Tuesday 18 June 2013 3:25pm
Nicole Foss
An international speaker on global finance, energy and environment will give a public talk at the University tomorrow discussing the worsening global financial crisis and how New Zealand and other countries can mitigate its long-term effects.
Ms Nicole Foss is a Canadian systems analyst and co-editor of The Automatic Earth blogsite. Her lecture is titled: “Financial predicament vulnerabilities and the end of economic growth” and will be held at Burns 2 Lecture Theatre, Arts Building, on Wednesday 19 June from 6 to 8pm.
Ms Foss will explore how the financial crisis of 2008 was the opening act of what she believes will subsequently be seen as the defining event of the next several decades. Her belief is that the global financial contraction is about to resume, with a stronger second phase of financial crisis.
She writes: “Europe is leading the way at the moment, with Cyprus the most recent major financial accident. Many other countries are set to follow Europe into austerity and the financial disaster it ensures”.
Ms Foss has been touring various countries looking at where they find themselves in terms of financial vulnerability, and potential immediacy of impact. This includes Europe, Iceland, the USA, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
She will set the current crisis in context of the history of economic expansions and contractions, explaining the various roles of money in relation to societal scale, and drawing lessons as to how to rebuild a financial system, and restore trust, following a major contraction.
“Armed with knowledge, and the appropriate tools to rebuild community and resilience, we can mitigate the effects of economic contraction substantially, though we cannot prevent it. This effort needs to be undertaken without delay, as the timescale is relatively short.”
Admission is free to the public but to guarantee seats, please register with: www.eventbrite.co.nz
The lecture is hosted by the University’s International Centre for Governance, Science & Society (SoGoS) in association with the Centre for Theology and Public Issues, other University centres and researchers, and Dunedin community groups. It is part of the 2013 SoGoS Conversations in Communities series, which provides a forum to hear and talk about selected current issues of public interest that affect communities.
For more information, contact:
Richman Wee
Faculty of Law
Tel: 03 479 5324
Email: richman.wee@otago.ac.nz
About Nicole Foss
Nicole Foss is Senior Editor of The Automatic Earth. Since January 2008, she and co-author Raúl Ilargi Meijer have been chronicling and interpreting the on-going credit crunch as the most pressing aspect of our current multi-faceted predicament. The site integrates finance, energy, environment, psychology, geopolitics and real politik in order to explain why we find ourselves in a state of crisis and what we can do about it.
Nicole is also an international speaker on global finance, energy and environment. She has lectured in hundreds of locations across North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and has made numerous media appearances in a variety of countries.
Prior to the establishment of The Automatic Earth, Nicole ran the Agri-Energy Producers' Association of Ontario, where she focused on farm-based biogas projects, grid connections for renewable energy and Feed-In Tariff policy development.
She is a former Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, where she specialised in nuclear safety in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, and conducted research into electricity policy at the EU level. She also has significant previous experience practicing as an environmental consultant.
Her academic qualifications include a BSc in Biology from Carleton University in Canada (where she focused primarily on neuroscience and psychology), a post-graduate diploma in air and water pollution control, and the common professional examination in law and an LLM in international law in development from the University of Warwick in the UK.
About the International Centre for Governance, Science & Society (SoGoS):
Directors: Associate Professor Colin Gavaghan & Professor Mark Henaghan (Faculty of Law)
The multidisciplinary International Centre for Society, Governance & Science (SoGoS) promotes and undertakes research on the challenges of integrating new knowledge with societal values and expectations, in the face of changing approaches being used to govern institutions and citizens, as well as their rights, relationships and responsibilities.
SoGoS aims to be an internationally renowned multidisciplinary research centre or ‘think tank’ that undertakes research and policy development work for governments, professional bodies and NGOs, as well as community groups, leaders and individuals.
The Centre builds on the work, experiences and successes of collaborations with multidisciplinary and indigenous researchers, trans-Tasman experts and international networks developed from the five-year multidisciplinary New Zealand Law Foundation-sponsored Human Genome Research Project led by Otago’s Faculty of Law.
www.otago.ac.nz/sogos
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