Anna Powles

Biography

Anna Powles is a Senior Lecturer in Security Studies with the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at Massey University, in Wellington, New Zealand. She specialises in geopolitics and security in the Pacific Islands region and is concerned with how state and non-state actors are changing the regional security order and the implications for crisis management, civil-military relations and security governance. Her current research and professional activities are focused on the New Zealand Pacific reset; the external and sub-regional dynamics shaping the regional order in the Pacific Islands; and New Zealand-Australian alliance relations in the Pacific.   Dr Powles is the co-founder of the Security, Politics and Development Network. She is also the co-investigator on a Strategic Initiative Fund research project on private security sector governance in the Pacific Islands and is on the Pacific Reset Advisory Group.  She is a member of Massey University’s Pacific Research and Policy Centre Caucus and a New Zealand Centre Fellow at Peking University. Publications include Shadows of the State: Private Security Governance in the Pacific (forthcoming, 2019); New Zealand’s Pacific Reset to the Pacific (under contract, VUW Press); Principled Engagement: Rebuilding Defence Ties with Fiji (Lowy Institute: 2016); Finding Common Ground: New Zealand and Regional Security Cooperation in the Pacific (APCSS: 2015); United Nations Peacekeeping Challenge: The Importance of the Integrated Approach (Routledge: 2015).