Christine Boulan-Smit

Christine Boulan-Smit (PhD, The Australian National University) is a Visiting Fellow in the Resource Management in Asia Pacific Program (RMAP), at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, and also works as a senior consultant anthropologist. Her current research interests in applied anthropology include social impact assessment and monitoring of significant industrial developments (mining) in rural South-East Asia and Latin America.

James J. Fox

James J. Fox was educated at Harvard (AB 1962) and Oxford (B Litt. 1965, DPhil. 1968). He is Professor of Anthropology in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University where he has served as Director from 1998 to 2006. He has edited several of the previous volumes in the Comparative Austronesian Project series, the most recent of which was The Poetic Power of Place: Comparative Perspectives on Austronesian Ideas of Locality (1997). His research continues to focus on Java and Timor and on issues in Austronesian studies.

Steve W. Francis

Steve W. Francis was educated at Monash University (B Arts. Hons 1990, M. Arts. 1991) and the University of Melbourne (PhD 2003). He is the Policy Co-ordinator for the Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues and a Fellow with the School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Melbourne. His research interests focus on homeland and movement in Oceania and the settlement needs of young refugees. Recent publications include a review of Voyages in Pacific Studies (2006) and Participation for All?: Searching for Marginalised Voices: The Case for Refugee young people in Children, Youth and Environments ((2006).

Barbara Dix Grimes

Barbara Dix Grimes is an anthropologist (PhD, 1994 The Australian National University) who has worked in eastern Indonesia with Universitas Hasanuddin in Sulawesi, Universitas Pattimura in Ambon, and, more recently, Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana in West Timor. She currently lives in Darwin and makes frequent trips to consult on community development issues and church-based multilingual education and translation programs in Timor.

Douglas Lewis

E. D. Lewis was educated in San Antonio, Texas, and studied at Rice University (BA 1971), Brown University (AM 1975), and the Australian National University (PhD 1983). He is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology in The University of Melbourne and is author of People of the Source: The Social and Ceremonial Order of Tana Wai Brama on Flores (1988), co-producer the film A Celebration of Origins (1994), editor of Timothy Asch and Ethnographic Film (1994), and author of a number of papers on the ethnology of eastern Indonesia. His current research aims at the development of a neurobiological theory of culture.

Graeme MacRae

Graeme MacRae teaches anthropology at Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand. His PhD (Anthropology, Auckland, 1998) was on economics, ritual, history and tourism in Bali. Since then he has been researching on a range of topics in Bali and South India including architecture, landscapes and agriculture. Recent publications include 'Negara Ubud; the theatre-state in twenty first century Bali' (in History and Anthropology 16:4) and 'Growing Rice after the Bomb: Where is Balinese agriculture going?' (in Critical Asian Studies. 37:2).

Andrew McWilliam

Andrew McWilliam completed his Phd (1990) in the Department of Anthropology of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. He is currently a Research Fellow in the Department with continuing interests in island Southeast Asia, especially eastern Indonesia and Timor. He is the author of Paths of Origin, Gates of Life: A study of place and precedence in southwest Timor (KITLV Press, 2002), and numerous papers on Timorese ethnography and the anthropology of natural resources management.

Mark S. Mosko

Mark S. Mosko is Professor and Head of the Anthropology Department in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. Over three decades he has conducted several ethnographic field studies of the North Mekeo peoples of Papua New Guinea and written comparatively on numerous other societies including hinterland Madang, Trobriands, Tikopia, ancient Hawaii, caste India, and the Mbuti of Zaire. His theoretical interests have covered a wide range of ethnological issues, from social organisation, structuralism, historical process and gift exchange theory to hierarchy and chieftainship, personhood and agency, body decoration, commodification, and hristian syncretism and symbolism. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, he is author of Quadripartite Structures (1985) and co-editor of Transformations of Hierarchy (1994) and On the Order of Chaos (2005).

Thomas Reuter

Thomas Reuter completed his PhD in anthropology on the indigenous highland people of Bali, Indonesia, at the The Australian National University’s Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies in 1996. After teaching for two years at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, Thomas returned to accept a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the Australian Research Council, at the University of Melbourne. In 2001, he was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship to study ‘Revivalism and Religious Conflict in Javanese Society’. He is currently employed as a Senior Research Fellow in Anthropology at Monash University. Theoretical interests include social organisation, change, conflict, movements, religion, ethnicity, kinship, marginality, architecture, cross-cultural epistemology, communication, and the politics of representation. Recently published books include: T.A. Reuter (ed.) 2003, Inequality, Crisis and Social Change in Indonesia: The Muted Worlds of Bali, London: Routledge-Curzon Press; T.A. Reuter, 2002, The House of Our Ancestors: Precedence and Dualism in Highland Balinese Society, Leiden: KITLV Press; T.A. Reuter, 2002, Custodians of the Sacred Mountains: Culture and Society in the Highlands of Bali, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

Mary Patterson

Mary Patterson completed undergraduate studies and a PhD in anthropology at the University of Sydney, and then taught at the University of Sydney. She took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Melbourne in 1991, and is now a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology in SAGES at Melbourne. Her fieldwork in Vanuatu spans three decades; her research interests extends to the Pacific region in general. She is currently working on issues of globalisation and the politics of aid in the Pacific and the intersection of politics and the occult. Her theoretical interests are in kinship, gender and social organisation, the occult and its political effects, and political anthropology.

Minako Sakai

Minako Sakai obtained her PhD in Anthropology from the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian National University in 2000. She is a senior lecturer in the Indonesian Studies at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales at ADFA campus. She is the editor of Beyond Jakarta: Regional Autonomy and Local Societies in Indonesia (Crawford 2002) and has published articles on  Islamic identity and local politics in Sumatra. Currently she is completing a book on globalised Malay identity and regionalism in Southeast Asia.

John Taylor

John Taylor is an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Gender Relations Centre of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. His current research explores gender relations and male subjectivities in northern Vanuatu, particularly through the social, economic and symbolic context of kava bisnis. This represents the initial component of a more extensive project that aims to expand knowledge of island Melanesian communities, sexuality and gender through the study of masculinities. John holds a BA in English Literature and Anthropology and a MA in Social Anthropology from the University of Auckland. Research for MA resulted in the monograph Consuming Identity: Modernity and Tourism in New Zealand (1998). His PhD was carried out at the Australian National University and the thesis "Ways of the place: History, cosmology and material culture in North Pentecost, Vanuatu" (2003) won the inaugural prize for a doctoral thesis awarded by the Australian Anthropological Society in 2004. He is currently revising this for publication as a book.

Philipus Tule

Philipus Tule was born in Kolinggi, Flores. He is a member of the Society of the Divine Word Missionaries (SVD) and studied at the seminary in Ledalero  in Flores from 1975-1984. In 1988, he obtained an MA in Islamology from the Pontifical Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Rome; in 2001, he obtained his PhD in Anthropology from the Australian National University, Canberra.  He is currently Rector of St Paul's Major Seminary in Ledalero.  His publications include Longing for the House of God, Dwelling in the House of the Ancestors: Local Belief, Christianity and Islam among the Kéo of Central Flores. (2004)

Phillip Winn

Phillip Winn is a Lecturer in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University, Canberra. His PhD (Anthropology, Australian National University, 2002) analyzed the interrelation of place, identity and community in the Banda Islands of central Maluku, Indonesia – a locale historically transformed by expansive trade and by colonial violence. In previous publications he has explored aspects of Muslim ritual practice and social life, inter-communal conflict, moral discourse and resource use, and cultural tourism. His current research interests include local visions of Islam in Southeast Asia, the cultural dynamics of state formation, and violence.