Neighbourhood Watch: Reporting on the Asia-Pacific

Mary-Louise O’Callaghan began her professional life as a cadet journalist on the Age newspaper in her hometown of Melbourne. From 1983-1985 she was the Guardian’s stringer in China before returning to Australia and eventually focusing her career in the Pacific. Winner of three Walkley awards, she was Fairfax South Pacific Correspondent (1987-1995) before joining The Australian in the same role (1995-2004).

In 1998 her book, Enemies Within: Papua New Guinea, Australia, and the Sandline Crisis: The Inside Story was published by Doubleday. More recently, Mary-Louise has led the Public Affairs team for the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Island.

Returning to Melbourne after 25 years in Solomon Islands, she is currently Head of CEO Media and Risk at World Vision Australia. She is married to Solomon Islands leader and anti-corruption campaigner, Joses Tuhanuku. They have four children.

David Nolan is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications. His work focuses on journalism studies and the changing role played by media in social and political relations. He recently led a Centre for Advancing Journalism research project focussing on the question of how media representations of Sudanese Australians might be improved.

His work has been published in numerous leading international journals, and he is also on the editorial board of the journal Communication, Politics and Culture.

Among his current research projects is work that focuses on the problem of understanding contemporary change in journalism in an historical light; critical analysis of media transformation in contemporary China; and the role performed by media in the politics and practice of contemporary humanitarianism.

Liam Fox has worked as a radio, television and video journalist for the ABC for 14 years. For five years from 2009 he was the ABC's Papua New Guinea correspondent based in Port Moresby and traveled extensively around the country covering everything from natural disasters to political turmoil to Australia's relationship with its former colony. Liam is now based in Melbourne and travels to Australia's other Pacific neighbours as the ABC's Pacific Affairs Reporter.

Jo Chandler is an award-winning freelance Australian journalist, author and editor. She has filed news and features from assignments across sub-Saharan Africa, Papua New Guinea, rural and remote Australia, Antarctica and Afghanistan. She has earned distinctions as an essayist, profile writer and narrative journalist, and is recognised across a range of specialty areas: science; environment; health; human rights; aid and development.

Jo teaches journalism at the University of Melbourne and is editor of The Citizen.

Jo worked for much of her career at the Age, culminating in roles as a Fairfax senior writer and roving national and international correspondent. In 2009 she earned a Walkley Award for commentary and analysis for articles generated by trips to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique.

Stefan Armbruster is the Brisbane-based correspondent for SBS News and Current Affairs, reporting on Queensland and the Pacific.

He was born in Germany, grew up in Australia, and worked for a decade in London for the BBC and other broadcasters. Since joining SBS in 2006, he has won a numerous journalism awards for his coverage of Aboriginal & Torres Strait islander, multicultural and Pacific affairs.