Supervision

I welcome expressions of interest for PhD, Masters and Honours level research from students with excellent academic records and an interest in researching topics relating to:

  • Security in the Pacific Islands, including Australia’s foreign and strategic policy in the region, the challenges facing Pacific Island states, and the changing geopolitics of the region.

  • Security in the Indo-Pacific, including Australia’s foreign and strategic policy in the region.

  • Peace and security, including humanitarian intervention, peacebuilding, and reconciliation and transitional justice.

I am currently supervising PhD students working on the following topics:

  • Jack Butcher, UoA, ‘Enhanced strategic engagement: Exploring the proliferation of strategic partnerships in Australia’s Indo-Pacific foreign policy’.

  • Benjamin Cherry-Smith, UoA, ‘All the way with the USA? The effect of the US-Australia alliance on Australian Foreign Policy’.

  • Priestley Habru, UoA, ‘Broader security concerns in the Indo-Pacific must be defined and framed within the local context’.

  • Maima Koro, UoA, ‘Analysing Pacific policing to meet complex and uncertain challenges of the future: Case Studies - Bougainville, Fiji and Samoa’.

  • Geyi Xie, UoA, ‘Reassessing China’s identity: Interaction with Oceania over the last five decades’.

  • William Waqavakatoga, UoA, ‘Pacific Small Island Developing States and the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific’.

I have previously supervised the following thesis topics to successful completion:

  • Miranda Booth, PhD, CDU, ‘Effective Foreign Military Engagement in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief: Australia and Pacific Island states’.

  • Henrietta McNeill, PhD, ANU, 'Exporting offenders, or creating criminal networks? Criminal deportees and their effect on transnational crime prevention and Pacific regional security'.

  • Laura Ball, Hons, ANU, 'In Need of A New Strategy?: The Australian Government’s Top-Down Approach to the Securitization of Development in the South Pacific' - completed 2014.

  • Richard Filer, Hons, ANU, 'The development of policing in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville: interactions between state and non-state institutions' - completed 2015.

  • Rachel Jones, MA, ANU, 'The evolution of Australia’s maritime security priorities in the South Pacific since the Second World War' - completed 2014.

  • Ruben Seaton, Hons, ANU, 'Assumptions and Interests: Australia's policy in the Pacific Islands since 1987' - completed 2019.

  • Dahlia Simangan, PhD, ANU, 'The limits of liberal peacebuilding and the pitfalls of local involvement: Cambodia, Kosovo and Timor-Leste in retrospect' - completed 2017.

  • Jay Vlazlovski, Hons, ANU, 'Transnational crime in the South Pacific: The Australian response' - completed 2015.