Niki Cattaneo has been selected by the South African BRICS Think Tank as one of ten official delegates to the VII BRICS Academic Forum to be held in Moscow in May 2015. She will present a paper entitled Trade policy, the WTO and productive transformation strategies in a context of regional and bilateral trade agreements: perspectives from South Africa.  The BRICS Academic Forum is held each year a few months before the annual Heads of State Summit of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).  The Academic Forum’s deliberations are summarised in a set of recommendations that are provided by the BRICS Think Tanks Council as formal input to the Heads of State Summit.  The venue for the Academic Forum and the Summit rotates among the BRICS countries in the order of the letters of the group’s acronym. The VI BRICS Academic Forum was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in March 2014.  David Fryer was an official South African delegate to the VI Academic Forum, presenting a paper entitled Structural change, productivity and the middle income trap: South Africa in comparative perspective (co-authored with Niki Cattaneo).  The selection of South African papers and presenters for the Academic Forum is coordinated by the South African BRICS Think Tank (currently the HSRC), in collaboration with the Department of International Relations and Cooperation and the Department of Higher Education and Training.