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Christopher Kinipi

Participation: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

Christopher KINIPI is a general medical practitioner with 20 years of clinical experience in primary health care and counseling in Papua New Guinea. He currently performs the duties of Director of Health Services at UPNG (2008-2022) and has taught Health Psychology and Techniques of Psychotherapy as a guest lecturer in Semester 2 of 2018 to undergraduate Psychology students in PNG. He has extensive knowledge and experience in managing both company and government-run primary health facilities in PNG. Recently, he coordinated the efforts of the UPNG COVID-19 Pandemic Response Team (2020-2021) to improve Infection Control and Prevention (IPC) Measures on campus. He will bring to the project his knowledge and experience in the diagnosis and treatment of PNG patients with psychosomatic disorders. He has research participation as a member of the “Papuan Past Project” team.  

Avis Babalu

Participation: 2023, 2024

Avis Babalu was born in Port Moresby, National Capital District, PNG. Ms Babalu holds a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology, Sociology and Archaeology from the University of Papua New Guinea. Avis has been employed for 10 years in the Oil & Gas industry, specifically in the Land Access, Compensation, Resettlement and Community Affairs divisions. She has social, anthropological and archaeological fieldwork experience in PNG.  Avis is currently preparing to start her master’s degree in Archaeology at the University of Papua New Guinea.  Avis will bring to the project her fieldwork skills, her knowledge of the Papuan Gulfs, physical and social landscape, and her connections within the extraction industry, particularly those who operate in areas that are of interest to prehistoric studies.

Justin Guibert

Participation: 2022

Justin Guibert is a prehistorian who specialises in lithic tool analysis of Palaeolithic periods. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at the TRACES laboratory of the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès under the direction of Professors Hubert Forestier (MNHN) and François Bon (Univ. Toulouse). He is joining the project to participate in the fieldwork in collaboration with the University of PNG and the study conducted by Hubert Forestier on the lithic industries of Papua New Guinea.

Simon Puaud

Participation: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

Simon Puaud is a geologist specialized in the prehistoric sites geology. He began his formation in Geology in a geologic engineer school. After a Master and a PhD in the Perpignan University. He specialized in Geology applied to Quaternary and Prehistory. He has focused his researches on the palaeoenvironmental interpretation of a sedimentary sequence of a southeastern French prehistoric site. Since 15 years he works on the palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental interpretation of quaternary sequences from the cave and rock shelters sediments analyses. After his PhD (2007), he was hired by the CNRS as a study engineer. He works currently on numerous projects led by searchers of Museum national d’Histoire naturelle and CNRS in France, Crimea, Cyprus, Cambodia, Thailand and Georgia. The possibility to study sedimentary infillings of papuan rockshelters is very important because this kind of approach is new. The high altitude of the Papuan sites is an opportunity to compare them with the European quaternary sites of the last glacial by studying the characteristics of the sediments and the sedimentary dynamics.