Industry fellows

Stefan Armbruster

Industry Fellow and Correspondent

Stefan Armbruster is an award-winning correspondent with more than 30 years of reporting experience in Australia and overseas. His coverage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait, multicultural, and Pacific affairs has been recognised with numerous journalism awards including from the Australian Human Rights Commission, UNAA , Queensland Clarions. He is a Colombia University Dart Centre Asia-Pacific fellow and a Walkley Sean Dorney Grant for Pacific Journalism recipient in 2023.

A delegate with Australian journalists’ union MEAA for more than a decade, he advocates for media freedom and media workers' rights. Stefan mentors and trains students and journalists, including in the Pacific with ABC Pacmas, and produces and delivers regional journalism workshops and forums.

He began as a broadcaster at Brisbane public radio 4ZZZ-FM in 1988. A DFAT -funded journalism attachment in 1994 at the Fiji Broadcasting Commission ( FBC ) established his ongoing connections with the Pacific region.

During almost a decade based in London he was a journalist and senior producer at BBC Radio 4’s flagship ‘Today’ current affairs program, the World Service and then ground-breaking News Online platform, as well as reporting and producing for Dow Jones and CNBC .

Returning to Australia in 2003, he was a senior producer at ABC News Online before becoming SBS World News’ Brisbane-based correspondent, covering Queensland and the Pacific region.

Dr Rebecca Bogiri

Non-Resident Fellow 2023

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-bogiri/

Rebecca Bogiri is an international development expert who is passionate about good development practices that can make a difference by reducing global poverty and inequality. She has over 9 years of experience in project management, working in agriculture, climate change and disaster risk reduction, GEDSI , and economic resilience spaces, and interacting directly with major donors partners and INGOs in the Pacific region.

Rebecca is currently the Director of Projects at Pacific Advisory, with a portfolio of over 27 million USD. She is a Ni-Vanuatu citizen and speaks English, Bislama and several native languages fluently. She holds the following qualifications: Diploma in Project Management, Bachelor of Laws , Bachelor of Arts in Economics, Masters in Applied Economics, and PhD in Economics.

Rowan Callick

Industry Fellow and Columnist

Rowan Callick is an Industry Fellow at Griffith University’s Asia Institute, and a columnist for The Australian. He grew up in England, graduating with a BA Honours from Exeter University, and worked for a daily newspaper before moving to Papua New Guinea, becoming general manager of a locally owned publishing, printing and retail group. In 1987 he moved to Australia, working for almost 20 years for The Australian Financial Review including as Hong Kong based China Correspondent and as Asia Pacific Editor. He worked for The Australian from 2006 to 2018, including two postings to Beijing as China Correspondent, and as Asia Pacific Editor.

Rowan is a governor of the Foundation for Development Cooperation and a member of the advisory boards of La Trobe Asia and of the China Studies Department also at La Trobe University. He was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Institute for International Affairs, and has won two Walkley Awards and the Graham Perkin Award for Australian Journalist of the Year. He was awarded the OBE at the nomination the government of PNG for services to journalism and to the training of PNG journalists. He has written three books, each published in English and Chinese, the most recent being “Party Time: Who Runs China And How” (Black Inc in Australia, and internationally by Palgrave Macmillan as “The Party Forever: Inside China’s Modern Communist Elite,” by Palgrave Macmillan).

Ruha Fifita

Industry Fellow

Ruha Fifita was born and raised in the Island Kingdom of Tonga and continues to engage with the Pacific region as an interdisciplinary artist, Co-founder of the Pacific art research collective - IVI Designs, and through her work as the Curatorial Assistant for Pacific Art at the Queensland state Gallery |Gallery of Modern Art. In 2006, whilst still living in Tonga, Ruha co-founded ON THE SPOT Inc. (OTS) - a community-based arts organisation – with the initial focus of engaging youth in creative projects aimed at contributing to the achievement of the 2015 Millennium Development Goals at the local level.

As an artist, she works closely with her siblings and extended family, developing a practice which focuses on collaboration, community engagement and connection with indigenous methods and materials. Her creative work has afforded her many opportunities to work, engage in discourses and exhibit throughout the Pacific region in settings such as the Auckland Art Festival, Pataka Art Gallery, The National Gallery of Victoria, and the Tjibaou Cultural Centre. The various endeavours she continues to engage in are linked as she consciously pursues opportunities to learn about some key questions, perhaps most simply summarised as; what is the role of religion, the role of young people and the role of the arts and artists in contributing to the spiritual and material advancement of civilisation?

Sean Jacobs

Industry Fellow

Peter Johnson

Industry Fellow, Agribusiness

Patrick Kaiku

Non-Resident Fellow 2022

Lecturer, Political Science Strand, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Papua New Guinea
Email: Patrick.Kaiku@gmail.com

Since the year 2012, Mr Patrick Kaiku has been a full-time teaching fellow in the Political Science Strand at the University of Papua New Guinea. Mr. Kaiku was an East-West Center participant from 2009-2011. Through the Asian Development Bank- Government of Japan scholarship he pursued MA postgraduate qualification in Pacific Islands Studies from the University of Hawaií at Manoa. In 2006 to 2008 he was a cadet research officer at the National Research Institute of Papua New Guinea. Mr. Kaiku has a BA from the University of Papua New Guinea, where he majored in Political Science. His areas of interest includes governance, Pacific studies and Pacific regionalism, international relations and political economy. He is presently applying for PhD-level studies.

Ian Kemish AO

Industry Fellow

Ian Kemish is a former senior Australian diplomat with interest and expertise in the history of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and in Australia’s engagement with those regions. He originally graduated with Honours in modern Southeast Asian history from the University of Queensland. Ian’s Government career included service as High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea, Ambassador to Germany, Head of the Prime Minister’s International division and DFAT’s Southeast Asia Division. He was awarded membership of the Order of Australia for his role, as Chair of the Government’s International Emergency Task Force, in leading the response to the 2002 Bali bombings. Mr. Kemish moved to the private sector in 2013, supporting companies to improve their sustainability and community development outcomes in the Indo-Pacific. This included the adoption of new greenhouse gas emissions targets and biodiversity objectives by leading ASX companies. Ian received a UQ Alumni Excellence Award in 2014.

Dr Peter Layton

Visting Fellow

Peter Layton has extensive military and defence experience over more than 35 years. He has a doctorate from the University of New South Wales on grand strategy and has taught on the topic at the Eisenhower College, US National Defence University. For his academic work he was awarded a Fellowship to the European University Institute in Italy.  For his work at the Pentagon, he was awarded the US Secretary of Defense’s Exceptional Public Service Medal. In 2020, he became a RUSI (UK) Associate Fellow.

Research interests

• Grand strategy, including national security strategies
• Strategic/ security studies particularly as relates to middle powers
• International relations theory
• Australian defence policy
• Alternative Futures development including for the Pacific Islands
• Pacific Island defence, security and aviation issues

Jack Whelan

Industry Fellow

Jack Whelan is a senior international technical, environmental and sustainability specialist with experience working with governments, multi and bi-lateral development agencies, public and private sectors, and leading not-for-profit organisations. I returned from Europe to Australia in 2008 after 30 years in tertiary education and senior technical, research and policy advocacy positions specialising in energy, climate change, biodiversity, sustainable development, responsible business practice and public-private partnerships. Engaged in the Asia-Pacific region while based in Sydney, my international development sectoral focus has focused on solid waste management, clean technology, renewable energy, infrastructure disaster resilience, climate change policy, social and environment safeguards and sustainability. I have also initiated and led several multi-stakeholder partnership programs in Asia-Pacific, including the ‘E4ALL’ - Energy for All partnership supported by ADB, and ‘ACRE’– Australian Carbon Rangeland Enterprises – which developed a rangeland carbon methodology for deployment under the Carbon Farming Initiative. I currently participate in the Sustainability Professional Membership category of the Australia New Zealand Pacific Plastics Pact ‘ANZPAC’, including its 3 technical workstreams.

Research interests

Australia, New Zealand, Asia-Pacific:

• sustainable development, disaster risk and resilience planning;
• post-COVID economic, social and environmental recovery;
• climate change adaptation, mitigation, renewable energy/clean tech policy, planning and management;
• solid waste, recycling and resource management.