Professor Neville Exon explores the achievements of Australian scientists during Australia’s involvement with the International Ocean Discovery Program, a marine research collaboration involving 23 countries that explores Earth's history and dynamics using high-technology ocean-going drilling platforms. Continuous cores of sediment and rock can be taken in nearly all water depths, down to 3 km beneath the seabed, covering time periods back to 200 million years.

Her Excellency Ms Unni Kløvstad, Norwegian Ambassador to Australia, will officially launch Global Allies: Comparing US Alliances in the 21st Century, edited by Professor Michael Wesley. The public lecture will start at 5.00 pm in Lecture Theatre 1, Hedley Bull Building (130 Garran Rd, Acton), The Australian National University. The launch will take place at 6.00 pm in the Hedley Bull Building Atrium.

Since 1940, when an Australian legation was established in Washington DC, Australian governments have expected much from their representatives in the American capital. This book brings together expert analyses of those who have served as heads of mission and of the challenges they have faced. Ranging beyond conventional studies of the Australian–United States relationship, it provides insights into the dynamics between Australian and US policymakers and into the culture of one of Australia’s oldest and most important overseas missions.

The relationship between customary land tenure and ‘modern’ forms of landed property has been a major political issue in the ‘Spearhead’ states of Melanesia since the late colonial period, and is even more pressing today, as the region is subject to its own version of what is described in the international literature as a new ‘land rush’ or ‘land grab’ in developing countries.

Amidst a landscape of political disenchantment, ordinary people in East Asia are finding new ways to take control of their own lives, respond to threats to their physical and cultural survival, and build better futures. New Worlds from Below shows how informal life politics in Northeast Asia is generating innovative ideas and practices that have region-wide and global relevance.

This book is available to download for free.

After an introduction and summary of the findings by the authors, The Doubters' Dilemma will be launched by Professor Emerita Gerlese Åkerlind.

A Difficult Neighbourhood will be launched on Tuesday 22 November by Professor Michael Wesley at the ANU Centre for European Studies, beginning at 5pm.

In 2017 it will be Australia’s turn to chair the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KP), an international organisation set up to regulate the trade in diamonds. Diamonds are a symbol of love, purchased to celebrate marriage, and it is therefore deeply ironic that the diamond trade has become linked with warfare and human rights violations committed in African producer countries such as Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and, more recently, Zimbabwe and Angola.

The ANU Press title, Population Ageing and Australia's Future will be launched on 8 November 2016 in the Members Bar at Old Parliament House.

Dr Kirstie Close-Barry, a descendant of the Lelean, Waterhouse and Churchward families who worked over several generations as Methodist missionaries in Fiji, considers her family's role in Fiji's past in her first book, A Mission Divided.