Seeking to deepen our understanding of the histories, politics and effects of modern law, governance and socio-economic development in the predominantly religious Pacific, my projects have gathered around six primary (and overlapping) topics of interest
1. The Levuka Study.
This 560-strong cohort study is a Marsden/NZ Royal Society-funded longitudinal, mixed methods project examining health, well-being, religious change and cooperation networks on the periphery of Fiji’s market economy.
2. Fijian constitution-making and religious nationalism
This Otago-funded three-year project combines over 30 interviews, direct observations of political events, and mixed methods analysis of 9000 constitutional submissions across 40 years to show how religion has reshaped Fiji’s politics of race, militarism, custom and development.
3. Multiple secularities and governing ‘religion’ in Oceania.
Funded by Leipzig’s Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, this Multiple Secularities project draws from 19th Century archival material and political and legal analyses to examine the historical pathways and critical junctures leading to the diverse religious freedom case law of the Pacific Islands.
4. Ethics and Governance in Pacific democracy building
Concluding four years of leading such a programme at the Fiji National University, this project draws on in-depth interviews and personal experiences of university teaching and management to evaluate the merits, costs, values and efficacy of the mandatory ethics and governance courses in Fijian universities.
5. Ritual and belief in climate change adaption
Co-funded by the University of the South Pacific and the Fiji National University, this project uses focus groups and first-hand observations to examine how villagers’ narratives on climate change affect agency and community cohesion when responding to village sea-water inundation from global warming.
6. Coding Pacific democracy and traditional culture
From the V-Dem project funded by the Nordic states to the Database of Religious History project run from the University of British Columbia, these mixed methods coding projects aim to quantify Pacific life – past and present – for big-data comparative socio-political analysis.
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