The Department of Pacific Affairs at the ANU is hosting an online conference honouring Emeritus Fellow Ron J. May’s contribution to research, writing and thinking about Papua New Guinea on 16 September 2021 and 01 October. DPA is currently developing an edited collection of papers – a Festschrift – celebrating Ron’s work. Those papers, authored by scholars from Papua New Guinea and scholars of Papua New Guinea based in Australia and New Zealand, will be presented and discussed at the conference.

The purpose of the conference being organised around the theme of ‘Learning About Papua New Guinea and How it Works’ is to provide discussion of each of the draft papers to be presented. This is to be done through both comments made by discussants and through subsequent ‘open’ discussion by (virtual) conference attendees.

Attached is a close-to-final conference program. Please note that this program will not be finalised until receipt of all draft papers, as some adjustments may be required. We will provide you with the final program as soon as it becomes available.

The program is available as a download on this Event page. It contains links (embedded in the session titles) that you can follow to register for each session. Following your registration, you will be sent instructions about how to connect/dial in to each session. We note that the conference will run with parallel sessions and so you will only be able to register for one session at a particular time.

We are planning to hold a major event to launch the Festschrift publication in 2022, when we expect to be able to host in-person events again.

Click here to view the program and register for the sessions.