Summary
In 2012, the Mitchell Oration lecture series was created with support from the Harold Mitchell Foundation to provide a new forum at which the most pressing development issues can be addressed by the best minds and most influential practitioners of our time.
With topics ranging from the challenges of aid dependency and economic reform in Africa to the Pacific and Indonesia’s new wave of economic change, this lecture series has established itself as one of the flagship events in the development arena.
The full series of lectures can be accessed in the tabs below. The Mitchell Oration was not held in 2020 or 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
There are two other annual orations that use the name ‘Mitchell’: a ‘Mitchell Oration’ is presented by the South Australian Equal Opportunity Commission and recognises Dame Roma Mitchell’s lifelong advocacy of human rights; the ‘Angus Mitchell Oration’ is an annual Rotary Club address which has been held for over 50 years.
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The series was launched by Timor Leste’s former Finance Minister, Ms Emilia Pires in 2012.
Subsequent lectures have been given:
- in 2013 by Jim Adams, Former Vice President for East Asia and the Pacific, World Bank;
- in 2015 by Dr Mari Elka Pangestu, Professor of International Economics at the University of Indonesia and Former Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy, Indonesian Government;
- in 2016 by Dr Mark Dybul, Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria;
- in 2017 by Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Board Chair of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance; and
- in 2018 by Professor Sir Richard Feachem, Director of the Global Health Group at the University of California San Francisco Institute for Global Health Sciences.
- In 2019, two lectures were held: the first at the 2019 Australasian Aid Conference by Dr Donald Kaberuka, former President of the African Development Bank and Rwanda’s Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, and the second by Dr Natalia Kanem, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). In 2022, we welcomed ‘Ofakilevuka Guttenbeil-Likiliki, Director of the Women and Children Crisis Centre Tonga.
The 11th Mitchell Oration was delivered in 2024 by Sir Masood Ahmed, President Emeritus of the Center for Global Development.
The event archive from 2012 - 2024 will be added shortly.