Informal Session: History and Movement in the Southern Lowlands of New Guinea
Organizers: Mark Busse and Joshua A. Bell

Thirty people met for our informal session. Following a presentation and discussion of a position paper by the session organizers, ten short presentations were made and discussed by attendees. While five people who had expressed interest could not be present for this meeting, an additional five people came forward with paper topics. Key themes that arose during the session were how to problematize historicity and mobility as analytic and indigenous categories; the particularities of the movement of objects, ideas and persons in the southern lowlands of New Guinea; the role of non-human agency in the region; the role of borders and barriers in the construction of regionality; and communities engagement with resource extraction. Due to the bulk of our participants being based in Australia, and our desire to involve Papua New Guineans and West Papuans, we have decided to leave the ASAO format and have separate workshop in 2009 in Australia. We would like to thank ASAO for providing us with such a productive forum to meet, and to our various participants for making the session so lively.