Bob Breen »

Bob Breen’s experience in first-hand research on international and regional peace support operations began in Somalia in 1993 and continued in Rwanda, the Middle East, Mozambique, Bougainville and East Timor periodically until 2002 when he began a PhD program at ANU, graduating in 2006. In 2007 he visited Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a review of Australian military force projection. In 2008 he published Struggling for Self Reliance: Four case studies of Australian Regional Force Projection in the late 1980s and the 1990s. In the same year he also co-authored a monograph for the Land Warfare Studies Centre, The world looking over their shoulders: Australian Strategic Corporals on Operations in Somalia and East Timor. He published two studies for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute on meeting security challenges in the South Pacific and strengthening civil-military collaboration for responding to overseas emergencies in 2009 . Currently, he is writing a volume of the official history of Australian peacekeeping in the South Pacific 1980-2006 and completing a manuscript on the Adaptive Army initiative 2007-2010.

Ryan Walter »

Dr Ryan Walter, author of A Critical History of the Economy, researches the relationship between politics and economic knowledge. He lectures in political theory at the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland.

Alan Rumsey »

Alan Rumsey first came to Australia in 1975 as a University of Chicago PhD student to study language and its relation to other aspects of social life among the Ngarinyin people in the Kimberley district of Western Australia. During 1978-95 he lectured in the Anthropology Department at the University of Sydney. While continuing his work with Aboriginal people in the Kimberleys, since 1981 Rumsey has done his main research in the Ku Waru region in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea, partly in collaboration with Francesca Merlan. Their work there has included projects on language and politics, verbal art, and child language socialization. In 1996 Rumsey joined the Anthropology Department in what is now the College of Asia and the Pacific at Australian National University, where he is a Professor and former Head of Department. In 2004 Rumsey was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. During 2010-11 he served as President of the Australian Anthropological Society. He is currently heading a major, ARC funded comparative project on Children’s language learning and the development of intersubjectivity, with special focus on Ku Waru children’s interactions with adults and other children . Key publications include ‘Wording, meaning and linguistic ideology’ (American Anthropologist 90: 91:346-61, 1990); Ku Waru: Language and Segmentary Politics in the Western Nebilyer Valley (Cambridge University Press, co-authored with Francesca Merlan, 1991); ‘Agency, personhood and the ‘I’ of discourse in the Pacific and beyond’ (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6:101-115, 2000); Sung Tales from the Papua New Guinea Highlands (ANU Press, co-edited with Don Niles, 2011); and ‘Intersubjectivity, deception, and the “opacity of other minds”: perspectives from Highland New Guinea and beyond’ (Language and Communication 33:326-43, 2013).

Richard Eves »

Richard Eves is an anthropologist who has published widely on issues of social change in Papua New Guinea. He is currently a Senior Fellow at State Society and Governance in Melanesia at The Australian National University. In 2008, with Leslie Butt, he co-edited the ground-breaking volume Making Sense of AIDS: Culture, Sexuality, and Power in Melanesia (2008), a collection of anthropological papers on how the epidemic is being understood and responded to in Melanesia. Most of his recent work deals with contemporary issues in Melanesia, straddling the boundaries between anthropology, development and international health, with a particular focus on gender, violence and the AIDS epidemic.

Alison M. Behie »

Alison M Behie is a Lecturer in the School of Archaeology & Anthropology in Biological Anthropology at The Australian National University. Her chief research foci include primate behaviour and conservation, and the impact of nutrition on stress and disease in non-human primates. Moreover, she is also studying the effects of habitat disturbance, including environmental disasters on humans and non-human primates. Alison runs a primate behavior and conservation field school in Cambodia each year.

Annemarie Devereux »

Annemarie Devereux is an international and public lawyer with particular expertise in the fields of international law, constitutional law and human rights. Her particular familiarity with Timor-Leste comes from her work as a legal adviser with the human rights component of three peacekeeping missions in Timor-Leste, working on rule of law issues. This included observing and assisting the constitutional process of 2001–2002. She has also worked with the United Nations in other contexts (including with the Security Council’s CTED, OHCHR, and a variety of International Commissions of Inquiry), as well as with the Australian Government’s Attorney-General’s Department. Alongside her legal practice, she has continued to research and teach in the areas of international law and public law.

Richard Tanter »

Richard Tanter has worked on security and environmental issues as a teacher, researcher, policy analyst, and advocate in Australia, the United States, Japan, Korea and Indonesia since the 1970s. He is currently Senior Research Associate at the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, and Professorial Fellow (Honorary) in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. At Melbourne University he teaches on nuclear weapons, and on East and Southeast Asian issues. Richard has been researching a range of technical and strategic issues related to US and Australian intelligence and military facilities in Australia, including the 2012 study The “Joint Facilities” revisited – Desmond Ball, democratic debate on security, and the human interest, and he is currently completing a study of Pine Gap, North West Cape, and Geraldton, and other major facilities in Australia. With Desmond Ball, he is completing a major research study of Japanese electronic intelligence organization, part of which, The Tools of Owatatsumi: Japan’s Ocean Surveillance and Defence Capabilities, was recently published by ANU Press. In recent work at the Nautilus Institute he has been working mainly on questions of East Asian nuclear deterrence and the North East Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone proposal. Richard is a frequent commentator on international affairs in newspapers, radio and television, quoted in the New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Asahi Shimbun, Australian Financial Review, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, Tempo, Jakarta Post, ABC, BBC, VOA, Al Jazeera, Straits Times and Pravda.

David Raftery »

David Raftery is an Anthropologist whose professional experience and postgraduate research has focused on the character of economic and cultural transitions in both indigenous and non-indigenous Australian contexts. In particular, his research centres on social and economic institutions of family and business, and their capacity to adapt to a post-carbon economy.

Raymond Mallon »

Raymond has more than two decades experience working on — and learning about — economic development and regulatory reform issues in Asia and the Pacific. Following economics consulting experience in Australia and Asia, he worked as an Economist at ADB in Manila (1988-91), as Resident Economist for UNDP in Hanoi (1991-93), and as a World Bank Senior Policy Advisor (1993-95) at Viet Nam’s (former) State Planning Committee (now MPI). He has worked as an itinerant freelance consultant/economist since 1995, and is currently part-time senior policy advisor to the Beyond WTO initiative funded by the Governments of Viet Nam, Australia, and the UK. Raymond is still trying to figure out why some countries succeed in achieving socio-economic development goals while others are less successful. Particular interests include: the role of businesses and the private sector in development processes; the impacts that Government policy and public investment decisions have on business investment, economic growth, employment generation and spatial development; and the growing importance of regional economic linkages and the opportunities that such linkages provide for developing countries to “catch-up” in terms of technology, productivity and living standards. Regular clients include multilateral (ADB, UN and World Bank), bilateral and government agencies, and research institutes. Raymond is regularly asked to advise on strategic planning, program formulation and evaluation, trade policy, regulatory reform, private sector development and rural urban transition issues. His involvement in various regional forum (such as the Greater Mekong Sub-region initiative) have provided interesting opportunities to work with leading regional thinkers in the development policy, academic and business sectors. Formal qualifications include a Master of Economics from ANU, and a Bachelor of Agriculture Economics from UNE. Raymond also serves on the Board of Directors of the United Nations International School in Hanoi, and is a member of the Board of Advisors for AISEC at the Hanoi Foreign Trade University.