Pacific Regional Security Hub

The Pacific Regional Security Hub  (PRSH) provides the space for more innovative and interdisciplinary Pacific agency and voices in regional human security, geopolitics, regional conflict, peace building, climate crisis and other security-related aspects. The Hub will connect scholars, policy makers, leaders and local communities in the region to engage in conversations, research and strategic thinking to address ongoing political, social, cultural, environmental and economic security issues.  

The PRSH is located within the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. The Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, led by Pro-Vice Chancellor Pacific Distinguished Professor Steven Ratuva, is a world leader in interdisciplinary research on the Pacific.

Activities and Events

Please follow this page for more information on the Pacific Regional Security Hub's activities and events including the network of Pacific Visiting Fellows, publications, webinars and the inaugural symposium in 2025.

PRSH Visiting Fellows  2024-2026

The PRSH is delighted to welcome the following inaugural non-resident Visiting Fellows:

• Sinclair Dinnen is a Professor with the Department of Pacific Affairs, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, at the Australian National University.  Professor Dinnen is a well-recognised expert in the Pacific  with longstanding research interests  and publications in regulatory pluralism, comparative criminology, justice and policing, conflict and peacebuilding, post-colonial state formation and development studies in Melanesia.
• Barbara Dreaver is the Television New Zealand Pacific Correspondent . She was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2024 for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities has received numerous accolades including two awards at New Zealand's Voyager Media Awards for her coverage of the 2019 Samoa measles outbreak andi n November 2022 she was named Reporter of the Year at the New Zealand Television Awards.. She is of Kiribati-Cook Islands-Kiwi heritage.
• Mary Hattori (PhD) is Director of the Pacific Islands Development Program, East West Center, in Honolulu. PIDP is  a founding member of the Council of Regional Organizations of the Pacic (CROP) and the Secretariat of the Pacic Islands Conference of Leaders (PICL) which is comprised of the 20 Heads of Government from the Pacific. She is Affiliate Graduate Faculty of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and the USC Rossier School of Education. Dr. Hattori is  a community organiser for Pacific Islanders in Hawai'i, co-organizer of cultural events such as the Annual Cultural Animation Film Festival, the Annual Celebrate Micronesia Festival, Micronesian Women’s Summit, and Oceania on the Reel, and is  an author, poet, public speaker, and philanthropist. Dr Hattori is a native Chamoru of Guåhan (Guam).
• Henry Ivarature (PhD)  is the Deputy Director, of the Pacific Security College, at the Australian National University. Dr Ivarature  has worked and travelled extensively in the Pacific Islands for over 28 years as a researcher, author and public servant. He has worked at the National Research Institute and the at the Department of  Prime Minister & NEC; as a regional civil servant with the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat in Fiji and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in Canberra. Dr Ivarature’s current areas of research are in understanding political instability, particularly, in the Western Pacific (PNG, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu) looking more closely at the executive stability.  Dr Ivarature  is from Papua New Guinea.
• Kenneth Gofigan Kuper is Associate Professor of Political Science and Micronesian Studies at the University of Guam, where he serves as a research professor at the Micronesian Area Research Center focusing on geopolitics and international relations. He is also a director of the Guam-based organization, Pacific Center for Island Security, which provides an island and islander perspective to geopolitical developments in the Pacific Islands region. He also sits on the Government of Guam’s Commission on Decolonization and has authored the most comprehensive study on Guam’s future political status options to date.
• Tess Newton Cain is an Adjunct Associate Professor with Griffith University, public commentator, and former lecturer in law at the University of the South Pacific. Her expertise lies in Pacific regionalism and security and she is the co-lead of the Defence Diplomacy in the Pacific project. She is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Vanuatu.
• James Movick has extensive leadership experience in national and regional inter-governmental cooperation in diplomacy, fisheries, trade policy and development in the Pacific region. He served as the inaugural Director of the Pacific Fusion Centre in Vanuatu (2022-2024). Previously he served as Deputy Director-General and Director General of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) from 2010 to 2018. He is a national of the Federated States of Micronesia.
• Anna Powles is an Associate Professor with the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at Massey University. Her research focuses on geopolitics, regional order and security cooperation in the Pacific, New Zealand foreign and defence policy, and the privatisation of security. She is the co-lead of the Defence Diplomacy in the Pacific project and sits on the Steering Committee for the Pacific Dialogue.
• Lopeti Senituli is President of the Tonga Law Society specialising in the fields of law and politics. He was formerly the Political and Media Advisor to Prime Ministers Dr Feleti Vaka’uta Sevele (2006-2010) and Samuela ‘Akilisi Pohiva (2018-2019).
• Sandra Tarte is an Associate Professor in the School of Law and Social Sciences at the University of the South Pacific. She specialises in Pacific regionalism and Fiji politics. Sandra is also co-convenor of the Pacific Dialogue, a Track Two process that was inaugurated at the University of the South Pacific in 2023 to promote dialogue on geopolitical and security issues in the Pacific. 
• Levi Tavita (PhD) is with the National University of Samoa and director of the Niupac Trust. Dr Tevita specialises in power relations in Samoa. 

Publications

• Discussion Papers - six commissioned discussion papers on regional security issues will be pubished online and free to download.
• Hub Short Analyses - these will be pubished online and free to download.

Webinars

January 2025 and February 2025

Symposium

March 2025 - The inagural Pacific Regional Security Hub Symposium on Transnational Organised Crime in the Pacific will be held in Suva, Fiji.