Sinclair Dinnen

Dr Sinclair Dinnen was appointed as a Post Doctoral Fellow when SSGM commenced in 1996. He is currently a Senior Fellow. Sinclair has qualifications in law and criminology and has lectured at the Law Faculty of the University of Papua New Guinea and been a researcher at the Papua New Guinea National Research Institute. His doctoral research undertaken in Port Moresby and parts of the Highlands was published as Law and Order in a Weak State: Crime and Politics in Papua New Guinea (2001). He has longstanding research interests in legal pluralism, crime, conflict and peacebuilding  with particular reference to the Melanesian Pacific countries. Sinclair is a contributing author to Pillars and Shadows: Statebuilding as Peacebuilding in Solomon Islands (with John Braithwaite, Matthew Allen, Valerie Braithwaite and Hilary Charlesworth, 2010). His edited books include Reflections on Violence in Melanesia (with Alison Ley, 2000); A Kind of Mending: Restorative Justice in the Pacific Islands (with Anita Jowett and Tess Newton, 2003); Politics and State Building in Solomon Islands (with Stewart Firth, 2008) and Civic Insecurity: Law, Order and HIV in Papua New Guinea (with Vicki Luker, 2010). He recently co-authored (with Doug Porter and Caroline Sage) a background paper on Conflict in Melanesia: Themes and Lessons for the World Development Report 2011. His present research looks at issues of state-building and nation-building, aid policy, informal justice and policing in Melanesia. Sinclair has also engaged in extensive policy work in the areas of law and justice, policing and conflict analysis for a range of non-government, government and international organisations including AusAID, World Bank, UNDP and UNICEF.

orcid https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7323-3222

Hybridity on the Ground in Peacebuilding and Development »

Critical Conversations

Publication date: March 2018
Hybridity on the Ground in Peacebuilding and Development engages with the possibilities and pitfalls of the increasingly popular notion of hybridity. The hybridity concept has been embraced by scholars and practitioners in response to the social and institutional complexities of peacebuilding and development practice. In particular, the concept appears well-suited to making sense of the mutually constitutive outcomes of processes of interaction between diverse…

Civic Insecurity »

Law, Order and HIV in Papua New Guinea

Edited by: Vicki Luker, Sinclair Dinnen
Publication date: December 2010
Papua New Guinea has a complex ‘law and order’ problem and an entrenched epidemic of HIV. This book explores their interaction. It also probes their joint challenges and opportunities—most fundamentally for civic security, a condition that could offer some immunity to both. This book is a valuable and timely contribution to a limited but growing body of scholarship in the social and structural contexts of HIV epidemiology in Papua New Guinea. The volume offers…

A Kind of Mending »

Restorative Justice in the Pacific Islands

Edited by: Sinclair Dinnen, Anita Jowitt, Tess Newton
Publication date: November 2010
With their rich traditions of conflict resolution and peacemaking, the Pacific Islands provide a fertile environment for developing new approaches to crime and conflict. Interactions between formal justice systems and informal methods of dispute resolution contain useful insights for policy makers and others interested in socially attuned resolutions to the problems of order that are found increasingly in the Pacific Islands as elsewhere. Contributors to this volume…

Pillars and Shadows »

Statebuilding as peacebuilding in Solomon Islands

Publication date: November 2010
This volume of the Peacebuilding Compared Project examines the sources of the armed conflict and coup in the Solomon Islands before and after the turn of the millennium. The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) has been an intensive peacekeeping operation, concentrating on building ‘core pillars’ of the modern state. It did not take adequate notice of a variety of shadow sources of power in the Solomon Islands, for example logging and…

Politics and State Building in Solomon Islands »

Publication date: May 2008
Politics and State Building in Solomon Islands examines a crisis moment in recent Solomon Islands history. Contributors examine what happened when unrest engulfed the capital of the small Melanesian country in the aftermath of the 2006 national elections, and consider what these events show about the Solomon Islands political system, the influence of Asian interests in business and politics, and why the crisis is best understood in the context of the country’s volatile…