Below is a list of people involved with the Solomon Islands Network, sorted by last name alphabetical order.
Sam Alasia (PhD student, Australian National University)
Historian and political scientist; ex-Minister for Information and ex-senior staff member, PMs Department
Simon Albert (Marine Ecologist at The University of Queensland)
Since 2004, I have been involved a range of environmental research projects in the Western Province, primarily Marovo and Roviana Lagoons. Specifically focusing on anthropogenic impacts on coastal marine ecosystems. At the request of local communities that are involved in this research work I have developed a range of educational products targeted at rural Solomon Islanders that attempt to convey the complex linkages within coastal ecosystems and how they support productive fisheries. Living in Gizo in the Western Province I am constantly challenged by the need to make our research locally appropriate and practical. Hence we have developed research approaches that rely heavily on interactions with local community members with flow of knowledge between all parties.
David Akin (Ann Arbor, USA)
Anthropologist working in Kwaio, Malaita.
Matthew Allen, (ANU, Australia)
Matthew Allen has been conducting research on various aspects of the societies and environments of Melanesia since 1997. His masters research consisted of a study of the human and economic geography of a small island in Vanuatu. His PhD research examined the relationships between the state, identity, resources and conflict in Solomon Islands. He has also conducted research in Papua New Guinea. Matthew’s current research is focused on resource conflict and identity politics in Melanesia, with secondary interests in smallholder agriculture, food security and rural development. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow with ANU’s Resource Management in Asia Pacific Program (RMAP).
Robert Anita (University of Western Sydney)
I initially trained as a primary school teacher at the Solomon Islands College of Higher Education. After six successful years of teaching experience, in 2004 I decided to further my understanding of teaching and learning by gaining higher qualifications in Australia. I completed several English short courses at the University of Western Sydney College and the Embassy College. I undertook a TESOL Certificate at International House-Teacher Training and Professional Centre at Sydney. In 2008 I completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Western Sydney with a major in English text and writing, and sub major in History, politics and philosophy. Then I completed a Masters degree at the University of Western Sydney specializing in primary education. For some years I was the Solomon Islands news reader at the Voice of Melanesian FM radio station in Sydney. I am now (2011) teaching in an Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory.
Bridget Appleyard (PhD student, School of Population Health and Queensland Institute of Medical Research, University of Queensland)
bridget.appleyard@uqconnect.edu.au
Bridget Appleyard is a PhD student with School of Population Health, UQ and Queensland Institute of Medical Research investigating health systems and social aspects of malaria in pregnancy in Solomon Islands. Bridget is also a member of the Solomon Islands Ministry of Health’s Malaria in Pregnancy Technical Working Group, currently investigating the burden of malaria in pregnancy in Solomon Islands and testing a health service based intervention to help control malaria in pregnancy. She has had a relationship with the Solomon’s since 2001 working on various AusAID projects, working in malaria control with the World Health Organisation, her Master’s project in Marovo Lagoon, and more recently with AusAID’s Pacific Malaria Initiative Support Centre based at UQ’s School of Population Health. Bridget’s relationship with the Solomons is also a personal one; she is married to a Malaitan.
Shankar Aswani (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
Shankar Aswani is an Associate Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara and he is member of the Anthropology and Marine Science departments. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection between social anthropology, human ecology, and marine science. Aswani follows a research agenda focusing on the human and cultural ecology of insular coastal groups, property rights and common property resources, and marine indigenous ecological knowledge of populations in Melanesia and the Insular Pacific in general. Fields of specialization include political ecology, classical sociocultural anthropology, economic anthropology, applied and development anthropology, ethnohistory, and human behavioural ecology. Aswani is dedicated to active field research, concentrating on the ecological adaptations of insular horticulturist-fishers and their transformation of island ecosystems, and on the implementation of new approaches in ecological anthropology and integrated coastal zone management. He is also very active in applied projects. Building upon sixteen years of research, he has worked with local communities to establish permanent, community-based Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) under customary sea tenure in the Western Solomons. He has also funded over ten development projects and established a local field school. As a result of these efforts, Aswani received a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation in 2005, which is the world’s most prestigious award in marine conservation. In fact, for the first time in its 15-year history this award has been given to an anthropologist.
Transform Aqorau (Director, PNA Office, Majuro, Marshall Islands)
A lawyer with a PhD from the Australian National University, once Deputy Director of Forum Fisheries Agency, and now head of the newly-established PNA Office which is based in Majuro, Marshall Islands. The PNA stands for Parties to the Nauru Agreement, a sub-regional grouping of countries consisting of Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Island and Tuvalu. Transform Aqoray is a specialist in international fisheries law.
Coralie Audouin (Hautes Ecoles en Sciences Sociales in Marseille)
I am currently a Masters degree French student from the Hautes Ecoles en Sciences Sociales in Marseille. I am working with the CREDO (Centre de Recherche et de documentation sur l Oceanie). I would like to grasp the dynamics between local and National levels in a society such as Solomon Islands, namely a multicultural and multi level society involved in a process of nation building. Kastom, a recurrent theme in politics as well as in the daily life, represents a cornerstone of my research project in the extent that I would like to understand the meaning and the content it depicts for every speaker and level of discourses. What is the representation of the state for and between communities is still an underlying question I should address. But above all, I would like to grasp the living relation between these different levels of power, understand the strategies, negotiations and stakes behind such link and to which level. The question remains complex but I am still thinking that the study of interconnection and links between these could be a useful approach for understanding the realities and complexities of such an ongoing process of nation building, not in a process of opposition but rather in one of connection. Hence, I really need to understand the Solomon Islands contexts and Political situation here. Master degree research (EHESS Marseille), and Bachelor of Sociology (University of Nantes), France.
Graham Baines (Brisbane, Australia)
Dr Graham Baines’ lifelong interest in, and commitment to, Melanesian studies, began when his adventurer father sent him, at the age of fourteen, to spend his school holidays with a professional crocodile hunter in a village on the Gulf of Papua.
He later studied and researched in universities in Australia, Canada and Britain before he found a niche in the Pacific islands -- at the University of the South Pacific, in Fiji. Nine years in Fiji, another nine years in Solomon Islands, and extended periods in almost all other countries and territories of the Pacific Island region has given him an extensive experience in tropical island natural resource management that draws on his academic background in agricultural science, ecology and micrometerology. In the Solomons he worked as an adviser in environmental management and in development planning, both at Provincial (Western Province, Isabel Province) and at national levels.
Always interested in the social dimensions of resource management he has long been engaged in collaborative associations with anthropologists and other social scientists. A number were post graduate students he has mentored, always emphasizing the application of their research skills and theoretical insights towards practical outcomes that benefit the communities that host them. His research interests now are focused on Melanesian customary land and sea tenure and natural resource management and, also, on aspects of the ethnology of Vella Lavella and Santa Isabel.
Since he has long worked as an independent consultant, many of his Solomon Islands writings are in agency-authored “grey literature” rather than academic journals. These include reports on resource and environmental management, customary tenure, development planning and constitutional reform. Some are useful source material for researchers and are to be made accessible through the Western Solomons Research Database which, as Senior Associate Scholar with the Pacific Studies Research Group at the University of Bergen he co-manages with Edvard Hviding and Cato Berg. He is also Honorary Research Fellow (Anthropology) at the University of Queensland (g.baines@uq.edu.au).
Nicola Baird (Journalist and novelist, London, UK)
I worked in SI for VSO (at Solomon Islands Development Trust) from 1990-1992; I ran a charity that provided funding for small-scale forest projects including a link between SI and PNG while director of Forest Management Foundation from 1993-1995. I've epublished a novel on life in Honiara, Coconut Wireless, recently in December 2010 and I am visiting the Solomons from June-August 2011 although not quite sure what I will do there, possibly some pro bono journalism training/ and maybe creating a radio play from Coconut Wireless.
I live in London, have a BA in politics and a MSc in Environmental Management. I've written seven books. Between 1999-2009 I worked for Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland, mostly as editor of its supporter magazine, Earthmatters. I currently also teach feature journalism and blog creation to Year 1 and Year 2 media studies students at the London College of Communication, part of the University of the Arts.
Read my ebook (rrp US$2.99 or £2.21). Download Coconut Wireless: a novel of love, life and South Pacific gossip on your phone, kindle or PC.
Kate Barclay, (Institute of International Studies, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia)
Kate Barclay’s research in Solomon Islands has been around the social, economic and political aspects of tuna industries. Her PhD was an economic anthropology of Solomon Taiyo (fieldwork 1999). In 2005 she returned as part of a wider project looking at development from tuna resources in Solomon Islands, PNG, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Fiji and Cook Islands.
Adam Beeson (VIDA Volunteer - Landowner Advocacy and Legal Support Unit, Public Solicitor's Office, Solomon Islands)
I will commence as a Legal Officer with the PSO, based in Gizo, in February 2012. The assignment is 12 months in duration.
Cyril Belshaw (Canada)
Cyril Belshaw served in the Solomon Islands colonial service in the 1940’s before going to LSE for his doctorate in social anthropology. During this service he obtained his M A in economics from Victoria College of the University of New Zealand, now Victoria University of Wellington. As D.O. his responsibility covered Gela, Savo, Ontong Java and Sikaiana, and for a time southern Bugotu. Later he moved to Makria, covering Ulawa, Oa-Raha and Oa-Riki. Later he worked in Fiji and was active as President of the IUAES, the ISSC, Pacific Science Association and other international academic organisations, and served as editor of Current Anthropology. He created the AnthroGlobe Journal and is slowly placing his archives at http://www.anthropologsing.ca . He is Emeritus Professor of University of British Columbia.
Judith Bennett (History Department, Otago University, New Zealand)
judy.bennett@stonebow.otago.ac.nz
Professor Bennett’s research interests are in Pacific History, Environmental History and Australia's and New Zealand's relations with the Pacific Islands. Her book, Natives and Exotics has just been published. She is currently working on a paper on Tarawa's memorials, as well as researching colonial forest policy in the western Pacific. Her plans for 2010 centre on a Marsden funded project, entitled "Mothers' darlings: Children of indigenous women and World War Two American servicemen in New Zealand and South Pacific societies" with Dr Angela Wanhalla. If you are looking for further information on the Mothers' Darling research project, or you are looking for your American serviceman father, please follow this link: http://www.otago.ac.nz/usfathers/.
Cato Berg (Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway)
Cato Berg is a doctoral fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen (Norway). His research has included both urban and rural issues. In Honiara he has worked with urban social organization among different ethnic groups, and particularly with issues such as reciprocity and kinship. In Vella Lavella he presently works with land, descent, hierarchy and political economy.
Cliff Bird (Australia)
Land the theology in SI.
Thomas L. Birk (PhD-fellow at Department of Geography and Geology, University of Copenhagen)
I am a PhD-fellow (2009-2011) doing a research project on the Solomon Islands, mainly drawing on field work in the Reef Islands, Temotu province. My topics of investigation include livelihoods changes, climate adaptation and disaster risk management. Previously, I did my master thesis based on field work on Ontong Java, Malaita province (2006).
David Borland (Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Port Moresby, PNG)
David is a chartered accountant and has worked for the past 25 years throughout the Pacific – Fiji, PNG, Samoa and Solomons. He has a B.Ec (Macquarie) and B.A.(Auckland) in Lingusitics. His interests include Pacific anthropology, history and linguistics, and hopes to one day study for an M.A. when he has the time. He is currently working in PNG as a liquidator & receiver and gets to travel extensively throughout PNG, the Solomons and Fiji.
David Boseto (A&M University, Corpus Christi, Texas, USA)
Freshwater fish biodiversity
Adele Broadbent (Victoria University Wellington, Development Studies Masters)
I am an experienced journalist completing my Masters in Development Studies looking at Media, Power and Development. I have spent the last seven years working for Volunteer Service Abroad and began post grad studies as I was left with more questions than answers. I will be in Honiara for all of June and a bit of July 2011. I aim use a snapshot in time taking one or several news stories that have been written about Donors on one issue. I will be looking at the language being used by the media outlets. My research will explore the meanings of peoples’ worlds through their lens on the media they are receiving. I am hoping to speak with journalists, members of civil society and members of the public. Fuelling my research is the growth in a relatively new sector of the Development sector called Media Development – funding the infrastructure and training of personnel in developing countries. The research around its effectiveness is thin, and in the Pacific, non-existent. My hope is that this research will be of some value to Solomon Islanders when analysing the sort of messages they are receiving from different sources that are media driven.
Jolene-Marie Braun (Australia)
Tom Brewer (Australia)
In 2007 I completed Honours at the University of Queensland under John Pandolfi. The study comprised an assessment of the effects of environment and anthropogenic indicators on reef fishery resources across 51 sites in the Solomon Islands. The main outcome was that proximity of resources to markets is a key driving force behind fishery condition. During this time I have done field work in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. I am now doing comparable work across the Pacific, in a collaborative project spanning Hawaii, James Cook University and the University of Queensland. My main interests now lie in human / environment spatial and temporal interactions modeling in small island developing nations, focusing on Melanesia. I currently have no University affiliations though will soon be applying for a PhD at James Cook University.
Morgan Brigg (University of Queensland, School of Political Science and International Studies)
Morgan Brigg is Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland, School of Political Science and International Studies. His research deals with questions of culture and governance in conflict resolution and development practice, including in the Solomon Islands. Morgan is the author of The New Politics of Conflict Resolution: Responding to Difference, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), has published in a range of international journals, and has extensive experience as a mediation practitioner.
Karen Brounéus (Postdoctoral Fellow, National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand)
Interested in the Solomon Islands Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the peacebuilding process at large.
Terry Brown (Church of Melanesia, Solomon Islands) terrymalaita@yahoo.com
Terry Brown recently retired as Church of Melanesia Bishop of Malaita, but continues to work on Anglican history of Solomon Islands and the Pacific through the web-based Project Canterbury, and other projects.
Christine Buckius (University of Queensland, Australia)
PhD research on Marovo Lagoon
Ben Burt (The British Museum, UK)
Anthropologist based at the British Museum, London, researching with the Kwara'ae of Malaita. Currently focusing on local artefact traditions of Malaita and the Solomons generally.
Lindsay Burton (Oxford University, UK)
Lindsay Burton is a doctoral student at Oxford University. She has a background in early childhood education and international education development and is currently studying community-based early childhood care and development in the Makira-Ulawa Province.
Tess Cain (Director of Operations at the Pacific Institute of Public Policy, USP Vanuatu)
Tess Newton Cain has a degree in law and a PhD in criminology, both from the University of Wales. Between 1997 and 2001 she was Lecturer in Law at the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu. Between 2001 and 2012 she worked as a freelance consultant in the Pacific island region based in Vanuatu. She is currently Director of Operations at the Pacific Institute of Public Policy.
David Cavanough (RAMSI Adviser Solomon Islands Ministry of Finance and Treasury)
I am a RAMSI Adviser working in the Solomon Islands Ministry of Finance and Treasury (Economic Reform Unit) and have been in Honiara since 2009.
Murray Chapman (University of Hawai’i, USA)
Christopher Chevalier (Australia)
Chris Chevalier is currently writing a biography of the late Solomon Mamaloni. He worked as an NGO fieldworker in Solomon Islands from 1989-98 and was Pacific project officer with Union Aid Abroad –APHEDA from 1999-2009. His research included a Master’s thesis on child mortality in Choiseul and applied research and evaluation in PNG, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands. Research topics have included Child Protection, HIV and AIDS, Malaria and TB, vocational training, and urban livelihoods. He is particularly interested in adapting qualitative methodologies and participatory research and evaluation tools for the Pacific context.
Tamar Cohen (University of Queensland, Australia)
I am an Anthropology honours student at University of Queensland. Having just graduated from a dual degree in Arts (anthropology) and Science (geographical sciences) my interests lie in the social aspects of natural resource management. I have been involved in the social science aspects of the University of Queensland Marovo Project since 2008 conducting research on issues of food and garden security, perceptions of environmental change and climate change impacts and adaptation. My current thesis topic concerns local perceptions of and response to increased coastal inundation in a small village in Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands. I explore local investment in the global crisis narrative of climate change which is being used by villagers to explain the coastal inundation and associated village relocation despite historical and anecdotal evidence that complicates such a cut and dried model of causation.
David Craig (University of Otago)
David Craig is Associate Professor at the National Centre for Lifecourse Research, University of Otago. I’m a sociologist with a fair history of development-related research, mainly in South East Asia (Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia) but also in Indigenous Queensland (while with the Indigenous Health Program at UQ) and here in Aotearoa New Zealand. My work is a mix of political sociology and ‘historical institutional’ investigation ( to explain!), though the PhD (ANU) was medical anthropology done in a human geography department! There are three books (Familiar Medicine, medical anthro in Vietnam; Development beyond neoliberalism? (a survey of development practice around ‘good governance’ and poverty reduction written with Doug Porter) and Winning the Peace (post conflict institution building in Cambodia, also with Doug, hopefully out late 2012). They all combine fairly close field engagement with various theory and history telling. I’ve loved South East Asia et al, but, following a long intention, the last couple of years have been travelling to PNG and Solomons. I’m currently cooking up a research project with scholars from here, Aust, and Solomons looking at lifecourse migration / labour mobility opportunities for young Solomon Islanders, and their ‘institutional contexts’ (again, very happy to explain, but best done out loud!).
Andreas Egelund Christensen (Department of Geography and Geology, University of Copenhagen)
I am a PhD-fellow at the Department of Geography and Geology at the University of Copenhagen. My field of interests in Solomon Islands are relatively new (and broad) and include the socio-economic- and environmental- dimensions of change on small islands in the Solomons. This includes; changing livelihoods, livelihood strategies, production systems, agriculture, mobility and migration patterns, household economies, institutions, climate change and beche-de-mer trade. I have been carrying out field work over 6 months in 2006-7 on Ontong Java, Bellona and in Honiara. And I will be going on field work again from November 2007 to March 2008. At the moment I am engaged in three papers with the working titles; a) Changing livelihoods on Ontong Java atoll, 1970-2007: the rise and fall of institutions for sustainable management in post-colonial Solomon Islands; b) Marine livelihoods in a remote island community: beche-de-mer trade and economic collapse on Ontong Java, Solomon Islands; c) Mobile livelihoods in a remote island community: spatial and social mobility on Ontong Java, Solomon Islands.
Pip Cohen
Pip Cohen has worked in the Pacific for the last 5 years living in Tonga, Fiji and a short time in Solomon Islands. For the last 2 years she has been coordinating the ReefBase Pacific project (improving information accessibility across the Pacific) for the WorldFish Center. Currently Pip is a PhD candidate with James Cook University working under the supervision of Simon Foale and Terry Hughes. Her research project will investigate the contribution of marine managed areas, including tabu area closures, to food security of Solomon Islands. Currently research locations will include Jorio on Vella, Lavella, Langalanga in Malaita and Sandfly in Ngella. A bibliography of some Solomon Islands literature relating to reefs, reef fisheries etc (241 records of which 123 are currently available in full text) http://www.reefbase.org/pacific/database.aspx?keyword=Solomon+Islands
Nicholas Coppel (RAMSI Special Coordinator)
Nicholas Coppel, a senior career officer with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), was Assistant Secretary, Pacific Regional and New Zealand Branch and Australia's lead negotiator for the Pacific regional trade and economic integration agreement, known as PACER Plus. Between 2006 and 2008 he was seconded to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet where he ran the branch responsible for the Pacific, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the United Nations. Nicholas Coppel was Executive Director of DFAT's Economic Analytical Unit from 2004-2006. Overseas, Nicholas has served as Deputy High Commissioner in Port Moresby and Deputy Head of Mission in Manila, with an earlier posting in Washington DC. He holds a Bachelor of Economics degree from the Australian National University and a Master of Business Administration degree from London Business School. He joined RAMSI as Special Coordinator in 2011.
Jennifer Corrin (School of Law, University of Queensland, Australia)
Professor Jennifer Corrin is Director of the Centre for Public, International and Comparative Law and a Professor in the UQ School of Law at University of Queensland. She was formerly an Associate Professor in the School of Law at the University of the South Pacific, having joined the Faculty after nine years in her own legal firm in Solomon Islands. Jennifer’s teaching responsibilities at UQ include an elective undergraduate course examining South Pacific Law. Her recent research has concentrated on the development of South Pacific Islands’ jurisprudence and has examined: the status of and the relationship between introduced law and customary law in small island countries of the South Pacific, concentrating on Melanesia, but also covering parts of Micronesia and Polynesia; conflict between customary law and human rights and, more particularly, the conflict between customary law and anti-discrimination provisions; the status of and the relationship between introduced law and customary law in the context of substantive areas of law; courts, civil practice, procedure and evidence. This research is mainly, but not exclusively, related to the South Pacific.
Anna Craven (UK)
[Ethnographic research, Ghana 1964 (collected pottery in the north for the University of Ghana Dept. of Archaeology 1964 and again 2007: www.interpretingceramics.com). Ethnographic research, Zambia and Uganda (Ssese Islands) 1965. Research for Survey of Race Relations, and documentary film company, London 1966-68 ('Witnesses', film on apartheid for International Defence and Aid; 'Reaching Out' for Christian Aid). Curator/Ethnographer, Jos and Kaduna Museums, Nigerian Federal Dept. of Antiquities 1968-73. Curator, Solomon Islands National Museum 1973-79; included development of the museum site and staff training, fund-raising, research and collection, liaison with visiting academics; compiling and editing for Cultural Association of the Solomon Islands, mounting Festivals of Traditional Music and Dance with the Cultural Association; co-organising UNESCO workshop on techniques of recording oral tradition, music, dance and material culture, and production of handbook 1976; research/liaison for 'Tribal Eye: Man Blong Custom', BBC documentary on Solomon Islands and Vanuatu by David Attenborough. Adviser on cultural centre development for the Gilberts/Kiribati government. Editor for USP.
Claire Cronin (State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Programme, ANU)
Claire Cronin is PhD candidate at the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Programme in ANU. Claire’s PhD research will focus on masculinity and violence prevention in Melanesia, with particular emphasis on the effects of post-conflict peace building initiatives on gender based violence. Claire graduated from the University of Oxford with a BA (Hons) in English Language and Literature, and from the University of London with an MA in Understanding and Securing Human Rights. Claire was the CEDAW Reporting Adviser for UN Women – the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (formerly UNIFEM) in the Pacific, with responsibility for Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Kiribati. Prior to this she undertook consultancies in the Pacific region with the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (RRRT) and as Pacific Project Manager for the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI). Claire has also spent two years working with CHRI in India, has taught English in China and worked with NGOs and as a public servant in the UK.
Peter Ina Crawford (Aarhus University, Denmark)
Peter Dart (University of Queensland, Australia)
Chief Investigator in a project on Conserving the Marine Biodiversity of Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands
Tammy Davies (St Andrews University. Scotland)
My background is Conservation Biology and I have worked with a range of international NGOs in Africa, Asia and C. America. I am now a potential PhD candidate at St Andrews University looking at environmental degradation and sustainability in the Solomon Islands, supervised by Dr Ioan Fazey.
Peter Dart (University of Queensland, Australia0
Associate Professor Peter Dart is located in the School of Land, Crop and Food Sciences at the University of Queensland. He has been involved in International Development issues since 1972. Peter oversaw the establishment of a forestry nursery at the village of Duvaha, in north New Georgia in 2000. This nursery was constructed by the villagers and is capable of producing more than half a million high quality tree seedlings a year for planting. Seedlings are raised as clones from cuttings or from seed and the Community has done a wonderful job in planting more than 1500ha since then with the trees growing very well. This is one of the best examples of community forestry in the world. Peter is interested to extend community planting systems like this to the rest of the Solomon Islands so that reforestation on a large scale can begin now and give the country a future economic stability that is likely to be in jeopardy once the current primary forests are logged out. He is also interested in developing sustainable forest management systems for the remaining primary forests and financing development for the Solomon Islands through carbon credits for Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD). He is Chief Investigator in a project on Conserving the Marine Biodiversity of Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands.
Sinclair Dinnen (State, Society and Governance in Melanesia, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University)
Dr Sinclair Dinnen was appointed as a Post Doctoral Fellow when SSGM commenced in 1996. Sinclair has qualifications in law and criminology. He previously lectured at the Law Faculty of the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) and later was a senior researcher at the National Research Institute (NRI) in Port Moresby. His doctoral research undertaken in Port Moresby and parts of the Highlands resulted in Law and Order in a Weak State: Crime and Politics in Papua New Guinea (2001). He has longstanding research interests in crime, conflict and peacebuilding, and legal pluralism in Melanesian countries, particularly PNG and The Solomon Islands. Sinclair's 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); and Politics and State Building in The Solomon Islands (with Stewart Firth, 2008). His current research looks at issues of state-building and nation-building, aid policy, interventionism, and policing in Melanesia. He is working on a book on Australian policing interventions in The Solomon Islands and Timor Leste. Sinclair has undertaken extensive policy work in the area of law and justice.
William W Donner
Norm Duke (Principal Research Fellow, Centre for Marine Studies, School of Botany, University of Queensland, Australia)
Dr Norm Duke is recognised worldwide for his specialist knowledge of mangrove forest ecosystems, especially regards their floristics, biogeography, evolution, climate change effects, sea level change, vegetation mapping, productivity, plant-animal relationships and habitat restoration. Over the last 30 years, he has lead international marine science projects studying coastal ecosystems and mangroves, particularly in Australia, Central America and Western Pacific. Human effects have also been considered in broad-scale studies of pollutant stress from major oil spills and severe storms. Dr Duke’s findings contribute toward development of mitigation strategies like the use of dispersants, bioremediation and mangrove planting, as well as standardising practical assessment techniques and monitoring methods. In recent years, Dr Duke has focused on two major research themes: assessing historical and short term change in mangrove stands particularly regarding management issues, habitat restoration, and climate change; and conducting studies of genetic variation of mangrove plant species worldwide. He is involved in the project, Conserving the Marine Biodiversity of Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands.
Christine Dureau (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
I am a historical anthropologist with long-term research interests in religion – particularly Christianity, conversion, vernacularisation and missionary culture – gender, memory and colonial cultures. Recently I have developed further interests in the senses as they relate to these broad topics. My research has been primarily focused on the cultural and religious history of the New Georgia Group, Western Solomon Islands and on the Australian and New Zealand Methodist Mission to the Western Solomons, 1903-1968.
Daniel Evans (World Bank – Justice for the Poor, Honiara)
Daniel Evans (World Bank, Honiara, Solomon Islands): Daniel is the country co-ordinator for the World Bank's 'Justice for the Poor' program in Solomon Islands (http://www.worldbank.org/justiceforthepoor). The initial focus of the Bank’s work is on two intersecting pieces of work: i). working with the Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs on 'Justice Delivered Locally': exploring avenues for the localisation of justice services in line with government policy; and ii). case studies surrounding the interaction between customary authorities and business. The Bank is working with both local and international academics to further evidence-based research in these two areas. Daniel has previously worked in Vanuatu, PNG and with the Public Solicitor's Office, Solomon Islands.
Michelle Dyer (PhD candidate, James Cook University)
I am a PhD candidate in the School of Anthropology at James Cook University in Townsville. I am interested in women’s work and control over the products of their labour in the Solomon Islands. This encompasses a gendered approach to natural resource use and management as well as activities that intersect with the cash economy. I started my PhD in 2011 and am currently scoping for an appropriate research site.
Louisa Evans (Research Fellow, James Cook University, Australia)
I am a social scientist with particular interests in governance institutions, knowledge systems, participation, adaptation, and complex adaptive systems thinking (resilience) related to coastal social-ecological systems. My experience to date has primarily been in East Africa through a PhD at the University of East Anglia (UK) and in more conceptual development of ideas around resilience-in-practice at the WorldFish Center (Malaysia). I am now fortunate to have the opportunity to expand my focus to the Solomon Islands and am very keen to develop research networks and friendships in the country and region. Over the next two-three years I hope to explore issues of participation, rights and resilience, and how institutions, leadership and networks can facilitate better outcomes for coastal communities. I will investigate these issues at the community level in Malaita province and at the national-provincial interface in Malaita (and possibly other provinces) as new initiatives to co-ordinate inshore fisheries policy, adaptation/disaster planning and environmental management emerge. The influence of external programmes, such as the Coral Triangle Initiative, on national strategies and action is also of interest to me. I would be very keen to collaborate on these and related issues.
Louisa Fakaia (Masters in Public Policy (Development Policy), ANU, Canberra)
I hold a BA in Sociology and Development from Massey University in NZ. My work experience is in project management particularly in educational and community projects. I have extensive background and knowledge on technical and vocational skill training in Solomon Islands. I have worked for several international donors eg. European Union and NZAID for the past ten years. I completed a country profile on "Skills Development in Solomon Islands" for the Forum Secretariat. I am currently working for the NZAID in Honiara as the Development Programme Coordinator. However, starting in 2008 I will be studying towards my Masters degree in Public Policy (Development Policy) at the Australian National University in Canberra. I won the Australian prestige award - Australian Leadership Award.
Matthew Fakaia (Solomon Islands College of Higher education)
Since 1975 I have been involved in SI education first as secondary school teacher and deputy principal. I am involved in creative writing among secondary schools and a coeditor of the secondary school creative writers’ publication. I am also a member of Pacific History Teachers Association which was initiated by Max Quanchi and Grant McCall. For the last 14 years I have been involved in teacher training at SICHE School of Education as lecturer in social studies, head of department and member of policy and planning committee. I am currently working with Waikato University in reviewing courses for SOE programs. My MPhil (Dev.Stud.) from Massey University leads me to have interest in rural development in Solomon Islands. I initiated a revolving funds program for Small Malaita women to encourage income-generating activities. I also initiated a shipping service for Small Malaita and currently am the Chairman of Small Malaita Shipping Services Board of Management. The company is owned by people of the island and has one vessel the MV Small Mala. My other interest is in the proposed state government setup for SI. My question is "Will it work for SI?" I envisage research on "Nationalism V Regionalism" A case of Solomon Islands. I will be seeking individuals and institutions interested in this area for advice and assistance
Ioan Fazey (Lecturer Sustainable Development, School of Geography and Geosciences, University of St Andrews,Scotland, UK)
Dr Ioan Fazey has been working in Makira-Ulawa Province with the grass-roots-led Kahua Association, looking at ways of building the adaptive capacity of the 4,500 people they represent. His work generally focuses on the interaction of the social and physical sciences.
Rick Feinberg (Professor of Anthropology, Kent State University, USA)
I have conducted research on Polynesian ‘outliers’ in the Solomon Islands since 1972. Most of that research has been on Anuta, but I have also worked on Nukumanu (Bougainville Province [formerly ‘North Solomons Province’], PNG and most recently, Taumako. Topics of investigation have included kinship and social organizations, indigenous seafaring, political and economic development, politics of culture, and oral traditions. I have dabbled in such areas as medical anthropology, religion, language, gender and music.
Simon Foale (James Cook University)
Lawrence Foana`ota (ex-Director, Solomon Islands National Museum)
Joseph Faukona (University of the South Pacific, Vanuatu)
foukona_j@vanuatu.usp.ac.fj or jdfoukona@gmail.com
Chris Filardi (Biodiversity Scientist for Pacific Programs, Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA)
My work in the Pacific is currently centered on integrating basic field biodiversity research initiatives with grassroots, community-based conservation efforts. Much of this work focuses on developing a framework and partnerships in the Solomon Islands for designing and implementing community-based forest reserves within customary lands. I also pursue a broad collaborative research program investigating the origins and evolution of Pacific birds.
Ronny Flynn (UK)
Ronny Flynn is a recently retired academic researcher, lecturer and charity manager from the UK. She lived and worked in Honiara during 1994-1997 and more recently during 2010 and 2011. Her expertise is in children’s services, social welfare, human rights and equalities. In 2011 she worked as a consultant for UNICEF and the Ministry of Women, Youth, Children and Family Affairs facilitating the analysis and writing up of a survey on children and young people’s views of their rights and life in Solomons.
Jon Fraenkel (Australian National University, Australia)
Ian Frazer (Otago University, New Zealand)
ian.frazer@stonebow.otago.ac.nz
Ward Friesen (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
Greg Fry (Australian National University, Australia)
Glynn Galo (DVC, Adventist University, Port Moresby)
David W. Gegeo (University of Canterbury, New Zealand)
Marianne George (Pacific Traditions Society, a non-profit organisation with educational purpose)
Anthropologist. During 1979 - 1985 conducted 21 months fieldwork among the Barok of south central PNG. The subject of research was the mortuary ritual cycle and spiritual power. During 1993 - 2009 documented Taumako voyaging knowledge and gave support to their own "Vaka Taumako Project" to teach a new generation how to build, sail and navigate using the methods of the pan-Polynesian culture hero "Lata."
Harry Greenwell
I worked in the Solomon Islands Ministry of Finance in 2005-2006 as part of RAMSI's economic governance program. I've maintained an interest in Solomon Islands since then, especially Solomons politics. Since early 2010,
I've written a blog on Solomons politics and its recent political history. I currently work in the PNG Treasury as part of the Strongim Gavman Program (SGP).
Rachael Gooberman (UK)
r.gooberman-hill@bristol.ac.uk
Pei-Yi Guo (Academia Sinica, Taiwan)
Anthropologist, working in Langalanga, Malaita
Hugh Govan
Has been involved in aspects of community participation, governance and marine resource management since 1987 throughout the country and with special interest in Renbel, Guadalcanal and Malaita. Currently interested in aid policy, national and provincial governance and the consolidation of village based approaches into nationallycohesive strategies which improve service delivery while supporting community resilience and local aspirations.
Martin Hadlow (Brisbane, Australia)
Martin is currently undertaking PhD studies at The University of Queensland on aspects of the history of radio broadcasting in Solomon Islands. He lived for four years in Solomon Islands (1980–1984) employed as News/Program Trainer and, later, as Head of Development and Training, with the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC). Martin has worked extensively elsewhere in the Pacific, including Papua New Guinea as Station Manager of Radio Bougainville (Kieta), Radio Morobe (Lae), Radio Gulf (Kerema) and in training roles in Port Moresby. He is an Honorary Board Member of the Pacific Radio Heritage Foundation http://www.radioheritage.net/ and spent 16 years with UNESCO in postings in Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and at Headquarters in Paris. He has also researched at the East-West Center, Hawaii and at the University of Leicester, UK. Until recently, he was an Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at The University of Queensland.
Kim Hagan (K.Hagen PhD student at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK)
Kim Hagen is a PhD student at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK. She is based in the geography department, but works in collaboration with geology. Her research is on community resilience to geological hazards in the Solomon Islands. In particular she focuses on the roles indigenous and scientific knowledge play in the construction and upscaling of disaster-related knowledge after the 2007 tsunami. She went to the Solomons in March for a preliminary field visit and workshop, and will do the major part of her field work the last months of this year and the first couple of months of 2012. Kim is from the Netherlands and holds a BA and MA in cultural anthropology and development studies, and a MA in environment and resource management.
Lenore Hamilton (University of the South Pacific, Vanuatu)
Humpress Harrington (Atoifi College of Nursing, Malaita, Solomon Islands)
Principal of the Atoifi College of Nursing, Malaita.
George Hoa`au (Assistant Secretary (United Nations, Treaties and Americas), Department of Foreign Affairs and External Trade, Solomon Islands)
David Hegarty (Australian National University, Australia)
Jo Herlihy
David Hilliard (Adelaide, South Australia)
david.hilliard@flinders.edu.au
At the Australian National University in 1966 David Hilliard completed one of the first PhD theses on the history of the Solomon Islands - a study of Protestant missions from the 1840s to the Second World War. Now retired from academic work, he continues his interest in the history of Christianity in the Solomon Islands and the history of the Melanesian Mission.
Geoffrey Hobbis (PhD candidate, Concordia University, Montreal Canada)
I am a Joint PhD Candidate in Social and Cultural Analysis at Concordia University in Montreal. My research focus sits at the intersection of the anthropology of the Internet and the sociology of emerging political consciousness. My intention is to conduct multi-site research between Honiara and another as of yet undecided site. I started my PhD program in 2011.
Tony Heorake (Director, Solomon Islands National Museum)
I formerly worked as a Science lecturer (Biology and Earth Science) at the School of Education, Solomon Islands College of Higher Education. I joined the Ministry of Culture and Tourism as Director of the Solomon Islands National Museum in 2010. I have an MSc in Environmental Science from the University of the South Pacific. My general interest is in the interrelationship between humans and the environment. Research interests include; palaeogeography of old settlements (including Lapita) sites, understanding the impact of environmental change especially sea level rise (and fall) on island societies, cultural/heritage and archaeological sites, and, understanding subsistence strategies of prehistoric peoples and how they were able to mitigate and adapt to the challenges and changes that affected them in the past. Am also interested in trying to understand and analyse the likely impact(s) of climate change on particular communities or sectors. I’ve been involved in Geoarchaeological research work (on Lapita sites) in both Fiji and Vanuatu in the recent past. Currently am assisting both local and overseas researchers and students with their work in the Solomon Islands.
Robert Hunt (New Zealand)
In 2010 I completed a biography of Captain Thomas Capel Tilly, RN, (1835-1900) - he was the Captain of the Melanesian Mission schooner 'Southern Cross' (1863-1869) after serving in Her Majesty's Navy in the 'Cordelia'. After he resigned from the mission vessel he was the Captain of several emigrant ships that brought people from Glasgow to Dunedin in NZ. Captain Tilly then helped to set up a Naval Training School in Auckland, and then acted as the Melanesian Mission agent there, I have had access to the Captain's two journals that he wrote up when he was aboard the 'Southern Cross'. As a young teacher I taught in the Pacifc Islands (in Fiji [1967,and then 1970-72], Tonga[1973], and in the Solomons[1968-69] ) and have maintained my interest about the islands since. When I was in the Solomons I met the Rev. Dr Charles Elliott Fox, CBE.MA,LittD who was a missionary there from 1903 till 1975. and have had published one article about his life at school and the University of Auckland (1895-1900). I am now retired - I was a schoolmaster and university teacher (in English and Linguistics) in both Japan (1988-1999) and then in China (2000-2008). I speak and read both Japanese and Chinese.
Edvard Hviding (University of Bergen, Norway)
Edvard Hviding (PhD, Bergen 1993) is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway and an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at James Cook University, Australia. Since 1986, he has been engaged in long-term anthropological research in Solomon Islands, where he has carried out more than three years of fieldwork mainly in the Marovo Lagoon area of Western Province, from bases in the villages of Chea and Tamaneke. Hviding’s research interests cover a range of interrelated topics such as fishing, agroforestry and the customary tenure of sea and land; kinship and social organization; language, local knowledge and indigenous epistemology; leadership and customary law; and the local manifestations and consequences of globalization (including the development initiatives of the Christian Fellowship Church). Hviding also carries out activities that connect his anthropological work with rural educational needs in Marovo Lagoon, as shown by the three multilingual books he has published in Marovo and other New Georgian languages (as well as English) and distributed to schools and villages around Marovo and northern New Georgia and at Gizo. Currently this aspect of his work takes place in the context of UNESCO/Solomon Islands Government projects on vernacular education. With professional film producers and in cooperation with the Solomon Islands National Museum, Hviding has directed and produced three anthropological documentary films based on his research in Marovo, including Chea’s Great Kuarao, which has been widely screened in the Solomons. Hviding leads a Pacific Studies research group at his university and coordinates the international research initiative ”Pacific Alternatives: Cultural Heritage and Political Innovation in Oceania” with institutional partners in the Pacific (national museums of Solomon Islands and Vanuatu), Australia, the United States and Europe.
Sue Ingram (PhD student, ANU)
Sue started a PhD at ANU in 2010, after a long career in public policy and development which included two years heading the Machinery of Government pillar of RAMSI from 2004 to 2006. Her research interests are in the area of peacebuilding and statebuilding, and more specifically the character of post-conflict political settlements, and her research is drawing on the experience of Timor-Leste, Bougainville and Solomon Islands.
Aaron Jenkins (Wetlands International Oceania)
Icthyology
Christine Jourdan (Concordia University, Canada)
Christine Jourdan received her Ph.D. in Linguistics and Anthropology in 1987 from the Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University and joined Concordia in 1991. Her work focuses on theories of cultural and social change, on the pidginization and creolization of languages, on the linguistic representation of cultural knowledge and practice, on language ideology and on changing food practices in Québec and in the Pacific. She has published books and articles on Solomon Islands Pijin, urbanization in the Pacific, and socio-cultural creolization. She is the author of two books, the co-editor of Language, Culture and Society (Cambridge University Press) and 4 scholarly anthologies, has published articles in English and French in journals such as Language in Society, Journal de la Société des Océanistes, Annual Review of Anthropology, Anthropologie et Sociétés, Culture as well as in many book collections. She is currently writing a book on the anthropology of pidgin and creole languages (Cambridge University Press) and researching a book on the transformations of food practices and ideologies in Quebec.
Sonia Juvik (University of Hawai’i, Hilo, USA)
Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka (University of Hawai’i, USA)
tkabutau@hawaii.edu; tarcisius_tara2004@yahoo.com
Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka is a scholar and teacher who has worked in universities, as well as with governments, inter-governmental organizations, and communities in the Pacific Islands. He comes from the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal in Solomon Islands, and was educated in Solomon Islands, Fiji, and Australia. He received his undergraduate and MA degrees from the University of the South Pacific and a PhD in political science and international relations from the Australian National University. In January 2009, he joined the Center for Pacific Island Studies as an associate professor. Prior to that, he was, for six years, a fellow at the East-West Center’s Pacific Islands Development Program. Before moving to Hawai’i he taught history and political science at the University of the South Pacific. Kabutaulaka’s research interests focus on governance, development, natural resources development, conflicts, post-conflict development, international intervention, peace-making, Australian foreign policies, and political developments in Melanesia in general, and Solomon Islands in particular. He has written extensively on the Solomon Islands civil unrest and the Australian-led regional intervention. He is the co-editor (with Greg Fry) of Intervention and State-building in the Pacific: the Legitimacy of ‘Cooperative Intervention’ (Manchester University Press, 2008). In 2000, following two years of civil unrest in Solomon Islands, Kabutaulaka participated in the peace talks in Townsville, Australia as the chief negotiator for one of the parties in the conflict. Over the years he has worked as a consultant for international and regional organizations and national governments. In his spare time he manages a website that he set up.
Albert Kaipua (student, University of Goroka)
Albert Kaipua is from west Rennell, Rennell-Belona Province
Peter Kenilorea Jr (United Nations, New York)
Jasper Kenter (University of Aberdeen)
I am currently pursuing an interdisciplinary PhD at Oceanlab, University of Aberdeen, on quantifying tradeoffs between ecosystem services. I have recently worked with the Kahua Association in Makira on valuing ecosystem services using a participatory, deliberative approach.
Nelly Kere (World Wildlife Fund, Gizo, Solomon Islands)
Marine Biology
Stephanie Ketterer (PhD Student, Social and Cultural Analysis Department of Sociology and Anthropology Concordia University, Montreal, Canada)
I hold a BA in International Relations from the University of Sussex, UK and an MA in Public Administration from the International Christian University, Japan. My primary research interests include conflict resolution and reconciliation (I have previously worked on Japan-South Korea relations) and for my PhD project I intend to look into the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the Solomon Islands.
Lord Khens (National Express, Honiara)
lordkhens@gmail.com; lordkhens@yahoo.co.nz
Cadet Journalist, National Express Newspaper
Jeff Kinch (Madang, Papua New Guinea)
Since completing my anthropology PhD fieldwork on marine resource use, management and access in the Bay Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG) in 1999, I became involved in the development and initial implementation of the United Nations Development Program/Global Environment Facility funded Conservation International implemented Milne Bay Community-based Coastal and Marine Conservation Program, before moving to Fiji in 2003 to work as the Community Development Specialist with the Foundation of the Peoples of the South Pacific International. In 2004, I returned to PNG to take up the position as the Coastal Fisheries Advisor with the University of Papua New Guinea, providing technical assistance to the European Union’s Rural Coastal Fisheries Development Project, the Asian Development Bank’s Coastal Fisheries Management and Development Project, and the Western Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Council’s PNG leatherback turtle project. Since 2006, I worked as a consultant and acquired an extensive knowledge of coastal livelihood strategies throughout the Pacific. In recent years, I have broadened my scope of expertise to include socio-economic and environmental impact assessments, and analysis of marketing chains. I have also conducted several project evaluations for government, NGOs and regional agencies in the Pacific. Currently I work as the Coastal Management Advisor with the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, based in Samoa. Originally born in Australia, I am now a permanent resident of PNG, having lived in PNG for the last 12 years; I am proficient in Melanesian Pigin, and Misima, a local language used in the Milne Bay Province, PNG.
Sarah Krose (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
Cultural anthropology, Vella Lavella
Jens Kruger (SOPAC: Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission)
Physical oceanography
Doreen Kuper
Jari Kupiainen
Jari.Kupiainen@ncp.fi or Jari.Kupiainen@pkamk.fi
Rolf Kuschel (Institute of Psychology, University of Copenhagen)
Rolf Kuschel is a professor in social psychology at the Institute of Psychology, University of Copenhagen. His interest in the Solomon Islands goes back to 1968 when he started his research on the Polynesian Ouliers Bellona and Rennell. He has written about blood feuding on the islands in the book: Vengeance is Their Reply (1988). In the book A Lexicon of Signs from a Polynesian Outlier Kuschel describes the sign language developed by the only deaf-mute on Rennell Island and together with Samuel H. Elbert and Toomasi Taupongi he published Dictionary of the language of Rennell and Bellona: English to Rennellese/Bellonese. At the present he is engaged in studying the migration routes of the Bellonese and Rennellese people with Dr. Michael Christiansen from the Danish Serum Institute. DNA analysis are being made. If anyone knows about other DNA studies of Polynesian Outliers he would be most grateful to know. For further information see http://www.psy.ku.dk/Kuschel.
Anita Lacey (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
Eric Lafargue
Hugh Laracy (Auckland University, New Zealand)
Historian of Solomon Islands and the Catholic Church in the Solomons.
Matthew Lauer (Department of Anthropology, San Diego State University, San Diego CA, USA)
mlauer@mail.sdsu.edu
Matthew Lauer is an ecological anthropologist who has worked in the Solomon Islands since 2001, primarily in Roviana, Vonavona, Gizo, and more recently Simbo. His research has involved the micro-ecology of coastal and marine resource use; the human dimensions of marine protected areas; participatory remote sensing, GIS, and mapping. Currently he’s working on a project assessing Simbo’s resilience and vulnerability to climate change and natural disasters.
Jane Lavers (PhD Candidate, University of Queensland)
I commenced my PhD research in 2012. My project is an archaeological investigation of changing patterns of settlement, trade and resource use over time, to identify the impact of the escalation and cessation of headhunting on the past inhabitants of the Bili Passage area of the Marovo Lagoon, New Georgia, Solomon Islands.
David Lawrence
Background: I am an anthropologist who has worked for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in Townsville and on international consultancies in Southeast Asia, Melanesia and northern Australia. I was the Research Coordinator for the Torres Strait Baseline Study (1990-1994) that investigated possible environmental damage to the Torres Strait marine environment from the mining operations at Ok Tedi in PNG. I also wrote a book on Aboriginal joint management in Kakadu National Park and a study of the first 25 years of marine park management in the Great Barrier Reef. Recently I finished a book for the ANU ePress on the work of Gunnar Landtman, the Finnish ethnologist who studied the Kiwai Papuans of the lower Fly River between 1910 and 1912. I was a research student attached to the National Musuem of Finland early in my career. I am currently Survey Manager of the annual RAMSI People's Survey in the Solomon Islands. Along with Matthew Allen I also worked on the Community Sector Program's Community Snapshot between 2005 and 2008.
Tanya Leary (National Parks and Wildlife Service, NSW, Australia)
Biodiversity
David Leeming
eeming@pipolfastaem.gov.sb (alternate david@leeming-consulting.com, Tel: +677 76396)
David Leeming is a UK citizen with a research science background, who has been living and working in Solomon Islands since 1995. He is a specialist in ICT for development, focusing in recent years on ICT in Education. Following three years as a volunteer secondary school teacher in Isabel and Rennell, he played a leading role, as Technical Advisor, in the establishment of the People First Network (PFnet) and was Manager of the EU-funded Distance Learning Centres Project (DLCP), a project establishing learning centres connected with VSAT broadband Internet. David was a member of an ad-hoc technical group that brought the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project to the region, and worked in 2008 as the regional coordinator of Secretariat of the Pacific Community’s OLPC programme. David has conducted research into the uptake and appropriation of the PFnet model for sustainable rural networking, and has been a leading stakeholder in ICT calling for a national ICT strategy. He has consulted for Commonwealth of learning, facilitating Learning4Content workshops in several countries in the region, and most recently in building Youth networks in Isabel Province, to collaboratively develop open educational resources associated with the theme “Learning4Peace”. David has given advice at all levels from rural communities to the Pacific Islands Forum Education Ministers at their annual Meetings. David has recently registered a consulting company Leeming International Consulting in Solomon Islands.
- User page and publications list
- PFnet
- PFnet Research and literature page
- DLCP
- Marovo Learning Network
- Isabel Youth learning network
- OLPC
Frank Lichtenberk (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
Wilson Liligeto
Mark Love (University of Queensland, Australia)
Social anthropology
Ken Lyons (Spatial Information Services Pty Ltd)
I am a private consultant; from 1982 to 1990 I was a professor at University of Queensland and most of that time as head of the Department of geographical sciences and planning. Since then I have been involved in a lot of development projects throughout the Pacific, Asia and Africa. For six years I was a technical project director of institutional strengthening project of the lands Department in the Solomons; that this year I am the technical manager/coordinator of one year's interim assistance to the lands Department in the Solomons.
http://www.spatialinfoservices.com.au/principal.html is a link to a bit about me on my web site
http://www.spatialinfoservices.com.au/improving_land_administration___less_developed_co.html is a link to my website which shows some information about land administration in developing countries and the services provided.
Kristen Lyons (Senior Lecturer, University of Queensland)
I am a Senior Lecturer in Development Sociology in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland. I have a long standing interest in sociological questions related to food, agriculture, the environment and development. In recent years my research interests have taken me to the Solomon Islands (much of my previous work has been on the African continent) where I am involved in an ACIAR funded collaborative project with various Australian and Solomon Island stakeholders) to design and implement an agro-forestry project. In my role as a social scientist, I am interested to examine the extent to which this development intervention matches with community aspirations and expectations about development, as well as various questions related to the social impacts of this intervention. I am at the early stages of this research, and to date most research has been focused in the Western Province, but look forward to extending the depth and geographical scope of this research in the future.
Danny McAvoy (Lecturer in International Development, School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich UK )
Formerly I worked for CARE in various humanitarian responses and for AusAID on Solomon Islands 2000-03, Afghanistan 2003-04, Iraq 2004-05 Desks and in the Peace and Conflict Unit 2008. Current interests include links between colonial and contemporary development policies and practices and the ethnography of humanitarian and state-building interventions in Solomon Islands and elsewhere.
Mike McCoy, (Australia)
Reptile ecology; photography
Lynne McDonald (Massey University, New Zealand)
PhD on Missions on Choiseul Solomon Islands, including Methodist, Roman Catholic and Seventh Day Adventist. A study of the development of indigenous churches, and a comparison between the three missions.
Debbie McDougall (University of Western Australia)
Debra McDougall is a socio-cultural anthropologist who has conducted research in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands, especially the island of Ranongga. She is currently based at the University of Western Australia, having completed a PhD (2004) and MA (1998) in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Debra’s research has focuses on religion, especially the globalization and indigenization of Christianity in the Pacific islands, and she has also written about land tenure, gender, and language. Debra’s research has been supported by grants from the Australian Research Council (2006-2010), Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological research (2000-01), and the Social Science Research Council (1998-99). She is currently working on a project that focuses on the politics of denominationalism in the Solomons and is completing a book manuscript that considers inter-ethnic relations in Ranongga.
Neil McEnteer (Auckland University, New Zealand)
History of the Anglican Church of Melanesia after 1942
John McKinnon (New Zealand)
John M.McKinnon is a cultural geographer and development consultant who specialises in participatory planning and safeguards work at community level. He has a long association with the Victoria University of Wellington School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences where he set up the Master of Development Studies course http://www.victoria.ac.nz/geo/people/john-mckinnon/index.html Most of his work has centred on the highland peoples of the Central Massif of mainland Southeast Asia (Thailand, P.R.China, Lao D.P.R.). He has also worked in Vanuatu and Fiji.
John and Jean McKinnon carried out fieldwork on the Mbilua coast of Vella Lavella 1969-1970 to collect socioeconomic and historical data for the colonial government which John used to write a PhD thesis in cultural geography (Victoria University of Wellington [VUW]1974). John briefly visited the Western Province in the 1980s on aid missions and both Jean and John have separately published journal articles on medicinal plants, early trade with European ships, Chayanov’s theory of population and resource use, social change in the post contact period, and resource management under traditional tenure. John’s most recent academic position was as the founding director of the Development Studies Programme and Associate Professor (VUW) (2000). Since 1975 most of his work has focused on participatory development and research work with the indigenous peoples of the Central Massif of mainland Southeast Asia and is currently working in Cambodia. For several years in the late 1980s and early 90s Jean worked with the Sasak women potters of Lombok, Indonesia.
David MacLaren (James Cook University)
David MacLaren first worked in Solomon Islands in 1992, where he managed the Medical Laboratory at Atoifi Adventist Hospital. In 2000 he produced a Masters of Public Health thesis 'Kastom and Health: A Study of Indigenous Concepts of Custom, Health and Appropriate Health Care within Kwaio, Solomon Islands' which documents the barriers Kwaio people, who follow ancestral culture and religion, face in accessing health services at Atoifi. David's 2006 PhD thesis 'Culturally Appropriate Health Care in Kwaio, Solomon Islands: An Action Research Approach' documents the process of collaboration between Atoifi and the Kwaio community to establish a culturally appropriate facility at Atoifi (opened in June 2006) that serves the health needs of Kwaio people without the desecration of core cultural or religious beliefs.
Gabriel Maelasi (Anglican Church of Melanesia)
Father Gabriel Maelasi, from Lau, Malaita, is an ex-Anglican Franciscan Brother, based in Brisbane until 2010. He completed his theological studies at Bishop Patteson Theological College Kohimarama from 1999 to 2002 in West Guadalcanal, graduating with a Diploma in Theology. Ordained a Priest in Diocese of Malaita, he served as an Assistant Priest in All Saints Church, Honiara and also in La-verna Friary, Hautambu in the Diocese of Central Solomons. He has also served as a honorary Priest in the Diocese of Quebec, when in 2004 he worked as a professional researcher with Professor Pierre Maranda in the Department of Anthropology in Universite Laval, Quebec City, Canada. Father Gabriel is interested in the cultural anthropology of the Lau Lagoon district of Malaita, Solomon Islands. After some years as a University Chaplain in the Multi-Faith Chaplaincy on St. Lucia Campus of the University of Queensland, he returned to the Solomons.
Jack Maebuta (University of New England, Australia)
Jack Maebuta is Lecturer in Education at the University of the South Pacific, and author of Vocational Education and Training In Solomon Islands: Policy and Practice (USP Lautoka Campus, 2006). He is currently completing his PhD in Peace Education at the University of New England, NSW, Australia under the Australian Leadership Award.
Derek Mane Smiles (Post Graduate- MA candidate, University of Hawaii at Manoa)
Derek is a MA candidate in political Science, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA. He obtained a BA in international relation and public policy from the University of Papua New Guinean in 2009 and work as Foreign Service officer with Solomon Islands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and external Trade until 2011 when he joins the University. He’s research interest are in rural development and community empowerment Santa Isabel, Solomon Islands.
Ruth Maetala (Solomon Islands)
Ruth Maetala is an Independent Consultant in the area of Women's Development in Solomon Islands. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Women's Studies and Social Anthropology from Massey University, New Zealand and a Diploma in Christian Education from Texas Bible College, USA. More recently she wrote Matrilineal Land Tenure Systems in Solomon Islands and is now working for the Ministry for Women, Youth and Children Affairs on the SI CEDAW State Report. Ruth writes poetry and is journaling SI gender and development issues.
Rodolfo Maggio (School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester)
rodolfo.maggio@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Rodolfo Maggio is a Postgraduate student of anthropology at the School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester. He holds an MSc in Anthropology and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science and is now attending an MA in Anthropological Research. His research concerns the change of values informing notions of money and morality in the Solomon Islands under the influence of exogenous economic and religious forces. He is particularly interested in the diffusion of Born-Again Christianity as well as in the effects of Globalization.
Bruno Manele (World Wildlife Fund, Gizo, Solomon Islands)
Marine biodiversity
Luki Mani (France)
Rebecca Manson
I commenced my PhD at the College of Law at ANU earlier in 2007, and am looking at women's access to land in Vanuatu and the Solomons. My other research interests include emergency management in Melanesia, particularly the links between livelihood security and civil security.
Pierre Maranda (Université Laval, Canada)
Professor emeritus and research director, Department of Anthropology, Laval University, Québec, G1K 7P4, Canada. He has done extensive fieldwork in the Lau Lagoon, Malaita, and is archiving his and his co-workers’ first-hand data at the Musée de la Civilisation du Québec. For a full description (mainly in French) see: http://www.mcq.org - in the rectangle “Research” type Fonds Pierre Maranda. The data description (for the time being mostly in Lau, French, and English) is available in a digitized 613 pages document. The Fonds, that remains open and is being currently updated,, contains 450 digitized photographs of artefacts with analyses and commentaries; 28,234 pages of ethnographic texts; 9 Go, 2,72 Mo,16,870 Ko of electronic documents (texts, tables, graphs); 2,275 digitized slides (with analyses and commentaries); 1,128 black & white photographs (with analyses and commentaries); 48 aerial photographs taken in the late 1950’s with analyses and commentaries; 24 maps on paper and 35 digitized maps of North Malaita with analyses and commentaries; 112 digitized audio tapes (CD’s) consisting of 693 indexed tracks, and 6 reels of silent Super-8 films (digitized on 6 DVD’s) consisting of 29 indexed sequences.
David Measures (Institute of Development Studies, UK)
I am a post graduate student at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK and am currently doing research on Micro finance in the Western Pacific, specifically looking at the Solomon Islands. My intention is to investigate MFs viability and impact in the region, who the specific targets are, and in what ways MF are related to poverty reduction, the national development strategy, and delivery of the MDGs. The secondary aim of the project is to look at the implications, impact, and cultural impasse that surround the application of MF projects.
Ole Mertz (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
Associate Professor Ole Mertz, Dept. of Geography and Geology, University of Copenhagen, has been working mainly on rural development related to natural resource management, tropical land use systems and adaptation to climate change. He was the coordinator of a research project in 2006-2007 on climate, livelihoods and production (CLIP) in Polynesian outliers of the Solomon Islands, where his specific interest was long term change land use and agricultural practices.
Xandra Miguel (Department of Anthropology, LSE, Britain)
PhD student
Sven Monter (Auckland University, New Zealand)
Biography of Augustin Kramer
Clive Moore (School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, University of Queensland, Australia)
Clive Moore’s SI interests go back 30 years to his initial work on 19th century labour migration to Queensland. More recently he wrote Happy Isles in Crisis: the historical causes for a failing state in Solomon Islands, 1998-2004 (2004) and edited the autobiography of Sir Peter Kenilorea, Tell It As It Is (2008). He is now working on a history of Malaita Province, and an historical encyclopedia of SI.
Takuya Nagaoka (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
Gordon Nanau (SICHE, Solomon Islands)
Vinnie Nomae (Lecturer in Economics, USP SI Campus)
I am currently a staff member of the USP SI Campus, a branch of the University of the South Pacific based in the Solomons. I am an Assistant Lecturer in Economics. For the almost past two decades I had been with the Central Bank of Solomon Islands and was the contracted Manager of the Economics Department of the Bank from 2006-2009. I resigned in late 2009 when I decided to switch career to be an academic. Holding a Postgraduate Diploma in Economics from the USP, I am pursuing my Masters Degree now —this was one of the reasons I chose to join USP, as being here will definitely provide greater opportunities of achieving this goal than being with the Central Bank. I also would like to undertake short research projects on mainly economic issues that are affecting or relevant to the domestic economy. I am a member of the Solomon Islands Creative Writers Association. I write poems and now going into composing songs (more in gospel) with a few of them being released. I usually have my younger son, 13 yrs old Julian, sing them. Following the release of his first Gospel DVD album (in 2005) I am now working on his second album. I am planning for the third (Christmas Album) for late this year. All the lyrics for second album are ready with tunes on but still looking for bucks to land them at a studio for recording. I have a passion for making video documentaries. I am thinking deeper and harder about making such about issues to preserve and safeguard my culture (Kwaio, Malaita). I am beginning to master video editing now.
Pacific Manuscripts Bureau
The Pacific Manuscripts Bureau copies archives, manuscripts and rare printed material relating to the Pacific Islands. The aim of the Bureau is to help with long-term preservation of the documentary heritage of the Pacific Islands and to make it accessible. The Pacific Manuscripts Bureau microfilm collection is the most extensive collection of non-government primary documentation on the Pacific Islands available to researchers. The Pacific Manuscripts Bureau welcomes suggestions for copying projects, particularly when the material is in danger of loss or destruction.http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/pambu/
Kylie Moloney began working as the Archivist for the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau in November 2008. She has worked as a librarian, curator and archivist in a variety of cultural institutions for the past 10 years in Australia, the Pacific and Europe. She has an academic background in music, librarianship, education and museum studies with professional interests in Pacific archives and material culture. She is currently the Executive Officer of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau.
James Page (Independent Researcher, Brisbane)
My interest in the Solomons stems from experience as a teacher with Su'u Secondary School in Malaita. I eventually completed a fieldwork masters degree in educational anthropology with UNE, under the title "Education and Acculturation on Malaita". Since that time I've completed a PhD in peace education with SCU, although the two seemingly separate research interests are linked.
David Palapu (Manager, Broadcast Services, SIBC, Solomon Islands)
Don Paterson (University of the South Pacific, Vanuatu)
Bill Palmer (Survey Morphology Group, University of Surrey, England; February 2008 + University of Newcastle (Australia)
Bill Palmer is a linguists specialising in Oceanic languages, particularly the Northwest Solomonic (NWS) languages (Santa Isabel, New Georgia, Choiseul and Bougainville/Buka). He has carried out linguistic fieldwork in the region for many years, primarily among the Kokota of Santa Isabel, and in recent years among the Torau of eastern Bougainville. He has written a reference grammar of Kokota, published smaller works on a number of other NWS languages, and has prepared online dictionaries for seven NWS languages.
Richard Pauka
Dr Richard Pauku PhD (2005) James Cook University, MSc (1992) Wye College, London B.Agr (1987) University of South Pacific, Fiji, formerly Assistant Forest Manager, Kolombangara Forest Products Ltd, Solomon Islands.
Research specialty is the domestication and commercialisation of indigenous fruits of the Pacific Islands, vegetative propagation, nursery development and management, integrated farming system (agroforestry) and forest resources management with emphasis on environment and socio-economic benefits to rural communities
Patrick Pikacha (PhD student, University of Queensland)
patrick.pikacha@uqconnect.edu.au; 4154917@student.uq.edu.au
I am a postgraduate student in the School of Animal Studies. I worked for the program of Conservation International before 2009. I have eight years of freelance experience, as a researcher, amateur photographer and writer, mainly highlight biodiversity issues in Solomon Islands. I founded the grassroots publication, Melanesian Geo, and website www.melanesiangeo.org. My interests are in working to develop community-based protected areas while providing real tangible benefits for communities through strong partnerships, social commitment and investment.
Heidi Pitman (PhD student, University of Queensland)
heidi.pitman@uq.edu.au
Heidi Pitman is a current PhD student undertaking ethnobotanical research in Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands. Her project explores the changing diet in this region with a focus on food choice. She is exploring these changes (a heavier reliance on highly processed imported foods rather than locally grown crops) in relation to convenience and time; food sovereignty, security and health; and Indigenous knowledge and cultural maintenance. She has spent more than 8 months undertaking research in the Marovo villages of Michi, Chubikopi, Bili, Tibara and Biche and is currently in the ‘write-up’ stage of her project to be completed in mid 2015. Heidi has a degree in archaeology (Hons) and her research interests include ethnobotany, Indigenous knowledge, food sovereignty and security, environmental management and contemporary Indigenous art.
Edward Otara Poroaki (student, University of Goroka)
Edward Otara Poroaki is from Nukaisi village, west Bauro, Makira-Ulawa Province)
Richard Prebble
Richard Prebble was a member of Parliament in New Zealand for 27 years. He left Parliament in 2006. Apart from holding many portfolios as a Minister, he was the first Minister of Pacific Island Affairs. He has completed projects for the Solomons as well as Fiji, and still has a great interest in the Pacific Islands.
Dorothy Prince
I was in the Solomons from 1975 -1991, mainly in education at KGVI School and SICHE (Teacher Training), then ran the Aruligo Book Centre for some years. I am currently Membership Secretary of the Pacific Islands Society of the UK and Ireland (PISUKI) which tries to keep its members up-to-date with current information.
Max Quanchi (University of the South Pacific)
Max Quanchi has run conferences and workshops in Honiara and organised publications for Solomon Island History teachers, conducted undergraduate fieldwork trips (with Grant McCall, UNSW) and worked on a WW11 documentary. His publications include colonial photography in the Solomons, Australia's historical relationships and Solomon Islander indentured labour in Queensland.
Chris Ramofafia (Perm Sec for the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Solomon Islands)
Marine resource management
Mary Raymond (School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS), University of London)
Kubokota Language, Ranongga
Glenn Raynor (Rotary Centre at ICU)
Glenn Raynor originates from the traditional Nuu-chah-nulth territory of Nootka Island off Vancouver Island's Pacific Coast. He served as Executive Director of Pacific Peoples' Partnership - www.pacificpeoplespartnership.org – in Victoria, BC, before being awarded a Rotary World Peace Fellowship in 2009. He’s is currently based in Tokyo where he’s completing a masters in conflict analysis and peace-building at the Rotary Centre at ICU. His thesis research is currently looking at Indigenous stewardship of globally significant cultural and natural assets in biodiversity hotspots.
Michelle Redman-MacLaren (James Cook University)
Michelle has taken an active interest in Solomon Islands since her first stay in 1992. Michelle’s current interests in Solomon Islands include HIV prevention and research capacity building (Malaita and Honiara).
Anthony Regan (Australian National University, Australia)
Sandra Revolon (Université de Provence (Aix-Marseille I) and CREDO (Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur l‘Océanie)
Rhys Richards (New Zealand)
Ex-career diplomat responsible for overseeing New Zealand aid to Melanesia and New Zealand High Commissioner to Solomon Islands (1996 to 1999). He has travelled widely in the Solomon Islands and Pacific Islands generally. Rhys Richards has published over a dozen book and fifty articles, mainly of sealing and whaling in the Pacific Islands before 1850. His recent research activities have involved locating something of the substantial body of knowledge of pre-Christian times, and the values and mores of each language group, that remains among the old people in Western Province. In several areas he has tried to combine some of their knowledge to record the cultural contexts of various museum 'artifacts.' He is co-author of Not Quite Extinct: Melanesian bark cloth (’tapa’) from western Solomon Islands, 2005 (with Kenneth Roga).
Anouk K. Ride (PhD students, University of Queensland)
I am a writer previously published books, newspapers and magazines in Australia, Europe and the USA. (Most recent book is a story of contact between Spanish and Indigenous people in Australia in the 1800s called The Grand Experiment, details available on www.anoukride.com/books. I am currently living in Honiara and undertaking a PhD in conflict resolution with the University of Queensland (examining narratives of identity conflicts in Solomon Islands) while also working for the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency and editing a book on community responses to natural disasters.
David Roe (Australia)
david.roe@jcu.edu.au (or) drdroe@gmail.com
An archaeologist, who completed his PhD on Guadalcanal and has worked in other areas of Solomon Islands, including Isabel.
Annie Ross (Marovo, Solomon Islands)
Lester G. Ross (Health Director, Seventh-day Adventists Church, Honiara)
Dr Lester Ross graduated from UPNG with Bachelor degrees in Medicine and Surgery in 1982. He then completed a PG MSc in Community Health in developing Countries at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, 1997-98, and a MBA at University of Waikato, 1997-98, followed by a PG certificate in Health Research from the Fiji School of Medicine in 2007. He worked as Senior and Principal Medical Officer in the SIG Ministry of Health (1985-89), Medical Superintendent, National Referral Hospital (1991-96), Under Secretary Health Care, Ministry of Health (1996-97), then as Permanent Secretary (1998-2001. In 2002 he became Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Youth, Sports & Women. In 2002 he moved to Fiji as Senior Lecturer, Public Health & Primary Care, Fiji School of Medicine, and in 2006 became the Health Director, Trans Pacific Union of Seventh-day Adventists, Suva. In 2008 he took up an appointment as Dean of the School of Health Science, Pacific Adventist University, Port Moresby, and in 2009 returned to the Ministry of Health with the church in Solomon Islands He is married with four children.
Jane Mink Rossen
Jane Mink Rossen holds a Doctorate in Ethnomusicology from Copenhagen University, Denmark, and a Masters degree from Columbia University, New York. She has served as Assistant Professor and Research Fellow at Copenhagen University’s Department of Musicology, as Research Associate at the Danish Folklore Archives and as Senior Research Fellow at the Danish Council for Research in the Humanities. In addition to the 2006 study on Jewish music in Denmark and numerous scholarly entries in encyclopedias, she is the author of a two-volume monograph based on her research in the Solomon Islands, Songs of Bellona Island : na taungua o Mungiki (Copenhagen, 1987) and a catalog of the non-European recordings at the Danish Folklore Archives (Copenhagen, 1989).
Paul Roughan (Christchurch, New Zealand, and Honiara)
proughan@islands-knowledge.org
Paul Roughan is Chair of the Islands Knowledge Institute, founded to build knowledge created by island peoples and within island spaces, both physical and theoretical. We do this through research and dissemination as well as through contributions to policy and programming frameworks. A central emphasis is building the capacity for research set within islands frameworks. This is accomplished by promoting leadership and participation by island researchers in research: into issues of importance to island peoples and societies; into theoretical and disciplinary problems which can benefit from research in island settings. IKI is headquartered in Solomon Islands, but have an active presence in Vanuatu and Aotearoa/New Zealand. IKI a strong interest in collaborations throughout the world with researchers and institutions with shared interests and values. http://www.islands-knowledge.org/.
John Roughan (Honiara, Solomon Islands)
John Samani (student, University of Goroka)
John Samani is from Malaita Province.
May Kenilorea Samasoni (AusAID, Honiara)
May Kenilorea Samasoni competed her bachelor’s degree at USP before becoming a lecturer at the Honiara USP Centre. She now works for AusAID in Honiara.
Kabini Sanga (Senior Lecturer in the School of Education,Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand)
Brian Sayer (specialist in distance and flexible learning)
I worked in Solomons from 1994 to 1997 and again from 2010 to now as Distance Learning Adviser to SICHE and new the Ministry of Education. Currently helping to develop school based training for untrained teachers. I will be here until at least July 2012. I am an educator with a background in community and non-formal education, working since the 1970s with open universities, NGOs and government agencies on distance and flexible learning programmes in education, health and social services. I was Distance Learning Adviser to the University of London from 2000-2009, where I set up the University’s Centre for Distance Education which was an international research and development centre with a strong focus on learning for development. I’ve had a long interest in self-directed learning (how we teach ourselves stuff) and a current interest in mobile learning (using mobile networks and devices for professional and community).
Ian Scales (Australian National University, Australia)
Michael W. Scott (London School of Economics, UK)
Michael Scott is a Lecturer in Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He works on Makira, and his recent book is The Severed Snake: Matrilineages, Making Place, and a Melanesian Christianity in Southeast Solomon Islands, Durham (NC): Carolina Academic Press, 2007.
Anne-Maree Schwarz (World Fish Centre, Nusatupe)
Marine resource management
Peter Sheppard (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
Archaeology, Roviana and Vella Lavella
Silas Sitai (Masters student in education, University of Goroka)
Silas Sitai is from Maira-Ulawa Province.
Solvor Sleveland (MPhil student, School of Social Science, University of Queensland)
solvor.sleveland@uqconnect.edu.au
I am originally from Norway and received a BA in Anthropology from the University of Bergen in 2010 and a postgraduate-Diploma from the University of Melbourne in 2011. I am currently doing an MPhil in Anthropology at University of Queensland, Australia under the supervision of Annie Ross and Fernanda Claudio. The project I am working on is concerned with tourism development in the villages of Timbara and Chubikopi, Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands. More specifically, I am looking at why tourists choose to travel to Solomon Islands only to stay at Western resorts instead of staying at local accommodation and meeting the locals. The locals are in fact eager for the tourist industry to expand down to their communities. In addition, my research focuses on what kind of tourism development/activities are possible to develop in the villages of Chubikopi and Tibara in Marovo Lagoon and what factors can potentially influence tourism development in these communities. The project is in its very early stages and if you have any input on this topic, please contact me.
Ann Springford
annspringford@gmail.com
I'm from NZ but presently living in Honiara working with some of the literacy organisations here. In 2005 I finished a master's thesis for Development Studies, Auckland University. It's called 'Underwriting Democracy: Literacy and Women in Solomon Islands'.
Gideon Sukumana (Curriculum Unit, Education Department, Solomon Islands)
Martin Mecab Sugui (Student, University of Goroka)
Martin Mecab Sugui is from Makira-Ulawa Province
Boniface Supa (Librarian, National Library of Solomon Islands)
boniface.supa@parliament.gov.sb
Since 2008, Boniface Supa is the Senior Parliamentary Librarian, National Parliament of Solomon Islands. He received his library qualifications from the USP and worked previously in the King George VI School Library, for the National Library Service, and at the Charles Elliot Fox Memorial Library, Kohimarama.
Exsley Taloiburi (University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia)
My background is in Marine Science and Environmental Management. Specific interests are in wastewater management, protected areas, sustainable environmental management and planning. I also developed some interests in rural community development.
Fred Taylor (University of Texas at Austin)
Institute for Geophysics - Univ. Texas at Austin John A. and Katherine G. Jackson School of Geosciences. Interested in Neotectonics
James Tedder (Australia)
Ex-District Commissioner, BSIP
Karly Tekulu (University of Canterbury, New Zealand)
Evelyn Tetehu
Brisbane-based Evelyn Tetehu is from Kia, Santa Isabel. She has an active interest in the culture and history of her island and has been engaged in a support role by several researchers. She has participated as a local expert in the British Museum’s “Melanesia Project” for which her preliminary work on traditional artefacts held as “household treasures” has been documented and is soon to be published. A trained nurse and midwife, Eve has assisted in an investigation of medical anthropology in her community (Ane Straume, University of Bergen) and also in an archaeological investigation of a fortified site near Kia (Melissa Carter, University of Sydney). She continues to seek opportunities to encourage Isabel people to take interest in their culture and history.
Jaap Timmer (Macquarie University)
Jaap Timmer is Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University, Sydney. He has a broad regional interest in the Southwest Pacific and Southeast Asia, with particular emphasis on Melanesia (Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea) and Indonesia (Papua, Maluku and Kalimantan). His anthropological research focuses on the cultural politics of knowledge with particular emphasis on religion, ethnicity, migration, tenure arrangements, access to justice, governance, and non-state regulations. He is also interested in designing, undertaking, and managing research, and organising and managing projects that take a lively interest in the history, use and meaning of indigenous knowledge and material culture.
Julian Treadaway (Curriculum Development Centre, Education Department, Honiara)
Worked in all aspects of education in SI since 1978 including SITC, SICHE (Lecturer and Head of School); USP Centre Director; Selwyn College and Pamua school; currently Curriculum Development Centre Advisor. Interested in a variety of social studies and creative writing. Published 6 plays for schools, dramatic adaptation of Jonathan Fifi’I’s autobiography, and Dancing, Dying, Crawling, Crying: stories of continuity and change in Tikopia, as well as numerous school texts in social studies. Wide interests in every aspect of Solomon Islands and particular connection with Tikopia. Concerned with relevant, practical education in RTCs. Helped to write government TVET policy, education course for RTC teachers at Vanga Teachers College and communication / social studies books for RTCs. Promoted creative writing, including editor of Solomons Islands volume of Mana. Organised Pacific History Conference in Honiara and interested in oral history.
Tim Thomas (Otago University, New Zealand)
tim.thomas@stonebow.otago.ac.nz
Archaeology and historical anthropology
Ian Tibbetts (University of Queensland, Australia)
Fish ecology, Marovo Lagoon
Alexis Tucker (University of California, San Diego, Department of Anthropology, PhD Candidate)
Alexis Tucker is a political anthropologist studying the state in the contemporary Solomon Islands.
Adrian Saomoana Tuhanuku (Bellona School principal)
I am the principal of the only community high school on Bellona, one of the only three secondary schools in the Province of Rennell and Bellona. I have been a primary school teacher for 20 years. I completed my fifth form and enter the teaching service as an untrained teacher from 1988 to 1991. From 1992 to 1993 I did a certificate in primary teaching at Solomon Islands College of Higher Education’s (SICHE) School of Education and Culture SECS). I returned to the Island of Bellona and worked there as a primary school teacher from 1994 to 2004. In 2005 I got a government scholarship to do under graduate studies at USP, Fiji, where I completed my BEd in primary education. I returned last year, 2007 but still have two more units to complete before I get my degree. I’m hoping to enroll next year to complete my undergraduate studies before planning to continue.
My interests are issues related to education in rural Solomon Islands, curriculum development, vernacular inclusion in the main stream curricula, youth and children affairs, culture, tradition governance and institutions development and environmental issues. All my interest are national as well as regional but in the context of the future of Rennell and Bellona. I am well versed in my culture and tradition. I was part of a Renbel student group who participated in the Vakavuku conference at USP which focused on pacific epistemology; our presentation was on reconciliation.
Marcos Vaena (Operations Officer, Sustainable Business Advisory, IFC, East Asia and the Pacific)
Marcos is responsible for IFC’s activities in the Solomon Islands and manages its portfolio of advisory projects, with a heavy focus on local economic development and community investment, particularly as it relates to the extractive industries sector. He is also the focal point for IFC's Sustainable Business Advisory Unit for the Pacific Region and splits his time between the Solomons and PNG. Marcos' main interests are around pro-poor, inclusive business models - and more generally on the role of private sector in development. He's also a keen enthusiast of ICT for development, particularly on how mobile technology can help bridge the inherent geographic challenges faced by Pacific Islands countries.
Prior to relocating to the Solomon Islands in November 2010, Marcos was the Program Manager for IFC’s Mozambique SME Linkages Program (Mozlink), a local supplier development program implemented in partnership with BHP Billiton, Sasol, Coca-Cola and SAB Miller which trained over 150 local small and medium enterprises, generating over 2,000 new jobs and $27 million in local spent between 2007-2010. He also worked with UNDP's Growing Sustainable Business Initiative in Mozambique (2007), focusing on the promotion and development of "bottom of the pyramid" and inclusive business models in the country. Marcos received his Masters in International Relations and International Economics from the Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC (2004), and Bachelors in Business Administration from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2000).
Geoffrey White (University of Hawai’i, USA)
I received my B.A. from Princeton in 1971 and PhD from the University of California, San Diego in 1978. At San Diego I discovered the Pacific and began research in the Solomon Islands where I have been working off and on ever since. I am currently a professor in the department and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the East-West Center. I am also affiliate faculty with the Certificate Program in International Cultural Studies, co-editor of the Stanford Press series on Contemporary Issues in Asia and the Pacific, and member of the editorial boards of American Ethnologist, and Ethos. In addition to ongoing work in the Solomon Islands on topics related to colonial history, cultural policy, and globalization, I have been working on Pacific and American war memory, with particular interest in Pearl Harbor as a site of historical imagination and national identity formation. With initial support from the Wenner-Gren Foundation I have been doing ethnographic research at the USS Arizona Memorial, carried out in cooperation with the National Park Service who operate the Memorial. My work at the East-West Center involves the organization of summer programs for college teachers and school teachers, with support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. These activities include teacher workshops on "Remembering Pearl Harbor: History, Memory, and Memorial" and, previously, programs for college faculty on "Re-Imagining Indigenous Cultures: The Pacific Islands". A select list of publications is available at http://www.anthropology.hawaii.edu/People/Faculty/White/index.html
Morgan Wairiu (University of Waikato, New Zealand)
Deborah Waite (University of Hawai’i, USA)
Richard Walter (Otago University)
Prehistory and archaeology, Roviana and Vellla Lavella
Ben Wate (Church of Melanesia; London School of Economics, UK)
Fr. Ben Wate is my name, an Anglican priest of the Anglican Church of Melanesia or COM married with 5 kids. I am currently doing postgraduate studies here at the London School of Economics - London, in the field of Social Anthropology (MSc in Social Anthropology). My first degree is in Theology and Ethics, from the Pacific Theological College, Suva, Fiji (2002-4). Prior to doing undergradute studies, I served for 10 years in the Church up to various levels up - to the post of Church's youth director- manning the youth development activities both in Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Upon completing my first degree course, I was posted as rector of All Saints parish (Mission place) in 2006- mid 2007.
Karen Watson-Gegeo (University of California at Davis USA)
Graeme Were (Convenor of Museum Studies Program, University of Queensland)
Graeme Were is an anthropologist working mainly in Papua New Guinea. However, he has recently been involved in a research project that created a 3d digital scale model of a war canoe from Vella Lavella, Solomon Islands and housed in the ethnographic collections of the British Museum. His interests involve examining the process of digital repatriation of museum collections to communities in the Solomon Islands and the Pacific, as well as collaborating with the National Museum in Honiara to establish projects around training and cultural documentation.
Johanna Whiteley (MPHIL/PHD in social anthropology at the LSE)
In late 2009 I started my MPHIL/PHD in social anthropology at the LSE under the supervision of Dr. Michael Scott. I hope to focus on the interface between imported and indigenous food in Southwest Isabel, exploring how production, exchange, and consumption of both kinds of foodstuffs underpin the social construction of personhood. The main questions this project will answer are: (1) how has the incorporation of purchased imported goods alongside indigenous staples altered the form and content of food practices in the West Solomons? (2) What do such changes reveal about the perceived efficacy of different food-types, both in the kind of relations secured by their transmission, and the different bodies produced by their consumption? My research will consist of 16 months participant observation in a rural community, hopefully in the Gao District of Isabel.
Ashley Wickham (Solomon Islands)
Shaun Williams (East Asia Pacific Land and Natural Resource Governance Advisor for the World Bank (LEGJR) based in Honiara, Solomon Islands)
A development practitioner with 25 years experience, in more than a dozen countries, on four continents Shaun has provided land and natural resource governance advice to multi-lateral agencies, governments and non-government advocacy groups. Before coming to Solomon Islands in 2009, Shaun was the Khartoum-based Chief of Party for the USAID-funded Customary Land Tenure Program, implementing the multicultural tenurial reforms set out in the North-South Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
Terence Wood (ANU PhD student)
I'm a PhD student in the State Society and Governance Programme at ANU. I intend for my PhD research to look at collective action in Solomon Islands and, specifically, how collective action contributes to the patterns of politics currently observed in the country. My academic interests include social capital, game theory, and the interactions between formal and informal institutions. I hope to apply insights from recent research in these areas to the Solomons context in an attempt to contribute to understanding of Solomons politics and political processes.
Chris Wright (UK)
Greg Young
Greg Young has been in the Pacific Islands for the larger part of the last forty years. He commenced his series of assorted Pacific experiences as a Plantation Manager in PNG in 1967 and, after a stint in Vietnam as a national serviceman (1969-71) returned to PNG with an oil exploration company working out of Kiunga in 1972. This experience in the ‘mining sector’ set the scene for the remainder of his working career in the Pacific especially in Solomon Islands where he has established a number of junior mineral exploration companies starting in 1983 and finishing recently with the establishment in 2005 of Pacific Porphyry (SI) Ltd which is presently active in Western Province. His activities in the minerals sector have alternated with forays into academia, usually at UQ, where he eventually earned a Master of Educational Studies degree in 1998. He has also been involved in encouraging UQ’s interest in Solomon Islands through participation in some of the activities of the UQ Solomons Project (now UQ Solomon Islands Partnership) including the establishment of the first UQ/Solomon Islands Government MOU in 2003. Related activities have included his involvement in community-based forestry, peace and conflict resolution and, in particular, as the Solomon Islands NGO project partner with UQ for the establishment phase(2004-06) of the Conserving the Marine Biodiversity of Marovo Lagoon project. He has recently commenced exploring research higher degree possibilities at UQ with the view to doing a PhD through the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining.
Hugo Zemp (Former director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, France)
Hugo Zemp is an ethnomusicologist. He is former director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), member of the Ethnomusicology research center at the Musue de l'Homme (ethnographic museum) in Paris. He taught Pacific Islands music and audiovisual methods in ethnomusicology at the University Paris X-Nanterre. The results of his fieldwork in SI between 1969 and 1977 are published in books, articles, LPs and CDs, and films, mainly on the music of Malaita, but recordings also with music from Guadalcanal and Ontong Java. He is investigating a publisher for a double CD with sound recordings of traditional music from Ontong Java, and another CD with music of the Kwaio people.