Keynote speakers

Ralph Regenvanu

Ralph Regenvanu is a Member of Parliament in Vanuatu and is also the Director of Vanuatu National Cultural Council. He is also currently completing his law degree with USP.

Lamont Lindstrom

Lamont Lindstrom is Kendall Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Tulsa. He is the author of Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond and Knowledge and Power in a South Pacific Society and has also published on kava, chiefs and governance, Pacific War ethnohistory, and has written a dictionary and grammar (with John Lynch) of Kwamera language (Tanna, Vanuatu).

Peter Larmour

Dr Peter Larmour is an Associate Professor in the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University. He has taught at UPNG, done research at USP, and written widely on land tenure, politics and corruption in the region. His 2005 book, 'Foreign Flowers', dealt with the transfer of foreign institutions into the region. His new book called Interpreting Corruption: Culture and Politics in the Pacific Islands is due top be published by the University of Hawaii Press in 2011.

Patrick D Nunn

Patrick D Nunn is currently Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University. Based in Fiji, his research interests include climate change and he is one of the IPCC scientists who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He is the author of more than 190 peer-reviewed publications as well as several books including Oceanic Islands (Blackwell, 1994), Environmental Change in the Pacific Basin (Wiley, 1999), Climate, Environment and Society in the Pacific during the Last Millennium (Elsevier, 2007), and the popular Vanished Islands and Hidden Continents of the Pacific (University of Hawai'i Press, 2009). In March 2003, he was awarded the Gregory Medal of the Pacific Science Association for outstanding service to science in the Pacific.