Personal profile

Research overview

I am primarily a legal anthropologist with longstanding interests in the legal and colonial history of Papua New Guinea, and how these have generated the complexities of its contemporary disputing systems including the hierarchy of its courts, land disputes, and informal or quasi-legal dispute management forums. Feeding into these interests are my broader work on gender, spatiality, temporality, property, kinship, and urbanisation in the postcolony.

Over the last 20+ years I have conducted research in both rural and urban settings in Papua New Guinea (PNG), working initially with its village courts and land mediation systems, and later with the district and national courts in order to explore the application - or avoidance - of customary law as it is represented in the country's Constitution. My work on customary law stems from an originary interest in how people's historical consciousness informs their legal consciousness, and their claim-staking to particular versions of cultural patrimony or authenticity in legal settings.

I have more recently conducted work, both as a consultant to international development agencies and in my own independent research, on how urban women in PNG seek redress for domestic violence. This has led to ongoing parallel research interests in how urban spaces in PNG (and elsewhere) are gendered, and in how community organisations that are too small or informal to be visible to the NGO/aid world seek to provide women and urban settlers more broadly with structures for cooperation and mutual aid.

I welcome applications from potential PhD students on topics including any of the above, as well as wider topics to do with Pacific ethnography and/or socio-legal studies.

Profile Keywords

Socio-legal studies; legal and colonial history; disputing systems; gender; space; temporality; property theory; kinship; cooperatives and mutualism; Pacific ethnography.

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 5 - Gender Equality
  • SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
  • SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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