photo: Gudrun Dittrich Biographical information: Roland Seib, born in 1954 in Worms on the Rhine; from 1973 studies of government and public administration, employment as a public servant and alternative civilian service; from 1981-1992 studies of social sciences, economics and anthropology and Ph.D. in international relations at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main; after that, I worked as a consultant and researcher in Papua New Guinea (1987-1988, 1996-2000, 2005, 2011, 2012, 2017), Australia and Fiji, among other places; 1988 and 1996 Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra; 1997-2000 Fellow at the Melanesian Institute in Goroka, 2002 Lecturer in Southeast Asian Studies at the Goethe University, Frankfurt/M.; in 2008 I earned a Ph.D. from the German School of Administrative Sciences in Speyer (now the German University) with a thesis on the State and Governance in Papua New Guinea; 2009-2010 Visiting Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt/M.; external advice and mentoring of numerous academic theses; since 2012 Associate of the Melanesian Institute, Goroka; independent scholar, author and critic. Publications, talks and lectures on a wide range of subjects including state building and fragile states, democratization as well as development and resource conflicts in the Pacific and particularly in Papua New Guinea.