Constitution making during State building  (Cambridge University Press, 2014; reprinted in paperback 2016)

This book represents a sustained attempt to examine the role that public participation has played during constitution making and its consequences for state performance, using case studies of Timor-Leste and Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. It is also one of the first attempts to conduct a detailed empirical study of the role played by a 'hybrid’ approach to state building.

This book employs both comparative constitutional law and comparative politics, as it proposes the idea of a 'constituent process', whereby public participation in constitution making plays a positive role in state building. This can help to foster a sense of political community and produce a constitution that enhances the legitimacy and effectiveness of state institutions because a liberal-local hybrid can emerge to balance international liberal practices with local customary ones. This book represents a sustained attempt to examine the role that public participation has played during state building and the consequences it has had for the performance of the state. It is also the first attempt to conduct a detailed empirical study of the role played by the liberal-local-hybrid approach in state building. Described by one CUP reviewer as making an ‘extraordinary contribution to our understanding of… twenty-first century state-building’. Described by another reviewer as ‘offer[ing] a highly sophisticated analysis of constitution making, and a compelling normative case for the importance of effective participatory democracy’ (The Round Table). Published with the leading academic publisher in my discipline and reprinted in paperback in 2016.

Reviewed in The Round Table and Pacific Affairs.

Research stemming from this book is in the Oxford Handbook of Constitutional Law in Asia (forthcoming), Elgar Handbook of Comparative Constitution-Making and Routledge Handbook of Timor-Leste. I was also invited to appear before the House of Representatives Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade 'Inquiry into Australia's Relationship with Timor-Leste' to speak about this research.

The impact of political reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific (ARC Discovery Project DP140102388, 2014-2018)

With Renee Jeffery and Lia Kent, I have examined the contribution that political reconciliation processes, practices and events make to the pursuit of peace and security in the Asia-Pacific, using case studies of Bougainville, Timor-Leste and Solomon Islands.

In September 2016 Lia and I convened a writers' workshop on the topic 'Transitional Justice and Civil Society in Asia and the Pacific' at the ANU. Our international speakers included Vasuki Nesiah (New York University), Jelena Subotic (Georgia State University) and Joanna Quinn (Western University).

Lia, Claire Cronin and I have edited a book for ANU Press, Civil Society and Transitional Justice in Asia and the Pacific, based on papers delivered at the workshop.

Lia and I have also edited a special issue of Global Change, Peace and Security on 'Reconceiving civil society and transitional justice: lessons from Asia and the Pacific', which explores the idea of enabling and disabling transitional justice and civil society.

Hybridity on the Ground in Peacebuilding and Development (ANU Press, 2018)

With Miranda Forsyth, Lia Kent, Sinclair Dinnen and Srinjoy Bose, I have examined the concept of hybridity across disciplines and case studies. In 2015 we received the Coral Bell School Horizons grant to organise a series of nine seminars on this topic.

The seminars culminated in a writers' workshop in December 2015 at which Professor Oliver Richmond (University of Manchester) delivered the keynote lecture.

We have edited a book for ANU Press, Hybridity in Peacebuilding and Development: Critical Conversations, based on the papers delivered at the workshop.

We have also developed the concept of 'critical hybridity' on which we have edited a special issue of Third World Thematics: A Third World Quarterly Journal , republished as an edited book, Hybridity in Peacebuilding and Development: A Critical and Reflexive Approach.  

Doing State-building better? Practising Hybridity in Melanesia (ARC Discovery Project DP160104692, 2016-2023) 

Australia is engaged in programs that draw upon local socio-political practices and institutions to assist its efforts to stabilise and build states in Melanesia, referred to as a ‘hybridity’ approach. For this project, I began by considering the paradox that, while Australia has successfully restored stability in its immediate region, Melanesia, its attempts to build stable liberal democracies have had modest results. My project has since expanding to a broader analysis of the contradictions and contributions of Australia’s policy towards the Pacific Islands region in respect of peacebuilding, security, development and beyond.

This research began by bringing constructivist thinking into conversation with the critical peacebuilding literature, with a particular focus on Timor-Leste. Publications have appeared in The Pacific Review, Third World Thematics and the Asian Journal of Peacebuilding. The latter article represents a relatively rare collaboration between an international academic who has been involved in this academic critique, and a Timorese intellectual, Guteriano Neves, who has played key roles in both government and civil society.

I decided to then focus on the micro-level of individual peacebuilding interveners, utilising constructivist approaches combined with the ontological security (in Cooperation and Conflict) and foreign policy analysis (in Global Society) literature. This research also generated a chapter on the social construction of peace in the Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation.

This research has also prompted my consideration of the influence of peacebuilding interveners’ emotions on how they perform peacebuilding work. I have edited a special issue of Cooperation and Conflict with Katrin Travouillon and Nicolas Lemay-Hebert on the topic of ‘emotions and peace’, in which our contributors explore the underexamined relationship between emotions and peace. You can read our introduction here, and my article on how the emotional and embodied experiences of international interveners influence their understanding and practice of peacebuilding here.

A book project analysing Australian policy towards the Pacific Islands is underway. An initial article exploring contradictions in Australia’s Pacific Islands discourse was published in the Australian Journal of International Affairs in 2021. Another article examining the way in which Australia’s security discourse has framed China’s presence in the Pacific Islands, and consequently influenced Australian policy towards the Pacific Islands research was also published in the Australian Journal of International Affairs in 2022.

In 2023 I continued my examination of contradictions in Australia’s Pacific policy by a deep analysis of the ways in which Australia attempts to enclose and exclude its ‘Pacific family’ in Political Geography. Writing with Maima Koro, Henrietta McNeill, and Henry Ivarature I have also sought to re-imagine the geopolitics of the Pacific Islands using the concepts of space, time, and scale to bridge understandings between Australians and Pacific peoples, also in Political Geography.