The Meheroo Jussawalla Research Award for the best participant research paper, submitted for the PTC Annual Conference, is named in honor of the late international telecommunications scholar Meheroo Jussawalla. A leading scholar in the Economics of Telecommunications, Jussawalla published 15 books in the field and garnered several national and international awards, including two from the Pacific Telecommunications Council.
The award for 2020 goes to Rob McMahon, an associate professor in the Faculty of Extension at the University of Alberta, Canada. His paper “Co-developing Digital Inclusion Policy and Programming with Indigenous Partners: Interventions from Canada” discusses two examples of digital inclusion co-developed with Indigenous peoples in Canada: a supply-side intervention focused on Indigenous involvement in digital policy through the First Mile Connectivity Consortium, and a demand-side intervention through a land-based digital literacy camp at Piikani First Nation.
Rob will present his paper at PTC’20 on Sunday, 19 January 2020 in The Gap Between Research, Policy, and Practice to Realize Broadband in Developing Region, which will be held from 09:00–10:30 MPCC, South Pacific 2.