Keynote Listeners

Our Keynote Listeners play an integral role in summarising and communicating the key take home messages from our conference each year.

Shortly after the event they will release a succinct summary for those looking for an overview of what they heard or a snapshot of what they missed.

Our Keynote Listeners are sourced from our Researchers in Agriculture for International Development (RAID) Network  – the Australia-based network  that brings together early to mid-career researchers with an interest in agriculture and international development.

RAID’s support is also key to the successful delivery of our conference scholar program, assisting with our scholar activities and mentoring some of the scholars. Most of our conference scholars go on to be members of the RAID Network, a program of the Crawford Fund.

Our RAID Keynote Listeners in 2024 are:

Anna Mackintosh

Anna Mackintosh is on RAID’s Central Committee and is passionate about agriculture for international development to achieve food security through international and cross-cultural mechanisms. Since she was a Crawford Fund Conference Scholar in 2019, Anna has been a scholar mentor and speaker throughout the Scholar Program. Whilst studying a Bachelor of Agricultural Science with Honours, she received a Crawford Fund Student Award to travel to Timor-Leste to work on a project targeting improved maternal and child nutrition through nutrition-sensitive agriculture.  Anna previously worked at ACIAR in the Social Systems Program and is now working at DFAT in the NGO sector.

John Yaxley

John is a graduate officer at ACIAR and working within RAID to expand university partnerships within Western Australia. He holds a BS in Agricultural Science with a second major in Applied Human Geography from the University of Western Australia.

John is an avid gardener with a longstanding passion for smallholder food production. As a researcher, his primary focus is on exploring traditional crops and cultural practises as a pathway towards climate resilient food production systems. Given his upbringing in the Mediterranean climate, John has a personal interest in overcoming drought through systemic changes to vulnerable farming enterprises. He believes that pathways towards more productive and resilient food systems can be delivered through a greater focus on integrating Neglected and Underutilized Species (NUS) into the system.

He has engaged in ACIAR and RAID to meet with likeminded researchers and expand his worldview on traditional food production systems.