Stephen Henningham is a specialist historian in the Historical Research Section in DFAT. He has a BA (Hons) from the University of New South Wales and a PhD from the Australian National University (ANU). He served in Noumea as a policy officer, in Port Moresby as Deputy High Commissioner, in Ho Chi Minh City as Consul General, and in Samoa as High Commissioner. He was a South Pacific specialist at the Office of National Assessments in 1987–1988 and worked on South Pacific politics and history at the ANU from 1988 to 1995. He was Director of the Pacific Bilateral Section in DFAT from 1995–1999, the senior civilian official in the Peace Monitoring Group in Bougainville in late 2000 and early 2001, and Director of the PNG Strongim Gavman [Strengthen Governance] Section from 2005–2009. Among other publications he is the author of France and the South Pacific: A Contemporary History (Allen & Unwin and University of Hawaii Press, 1992) and The Pacific Island States: Security and Sovereignty in the Post-Cold War World (Macmillan and St Martin’s Press, 1995).