I am currently a PhD Candidate at The Australian National University conducting research into the history of modernity and cultural change for Huli-speaking people of Papua New Guinea's Hela Province. Hela Province is also home to ExxonMobil's giant PNG LNG project. I have a background in environmental geo-science and development anthropology with a focus on the impact of resource extraction operations in Papua New Guinea. Prior to my PhD I completed a masters thesis that focused on West Papuan refugee villages on the Fly River and their experience with pollution from the Ok Tedi mine. Prior to my post-graduate studies I worked for several years as an environmental consultant and before that as a gold exploration geologist. I am most interested in the complex issues around resource extraction as a vehicle for development and its attendant failures in that regard.

Cultural Change, Development, Social Change, Violence, Weapons, Mining and its Discontents, Materiality, Language Change, Indigenous Agency, Indigenous Peoples Rights

Anthropology
History

Australian Anthropological Society (AAS)
Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO)

Melanesia

First and Early contacts
The Colonial time
20th century
21st century
Anticipatory
Ancestral Oceania

Huli