Patrick Guinness came to anthropology as a consequence of working on a cattle station and indigenous community in North Queensland. After his undergraduate degree he undertook his first fieldwork in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea where he researched folklore for his master's degree and later worked with the local Airmen's Memorial Primary School and the Department of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries. After an absence of three decades he again returned to West New Britain in 2009 to renew community and research interests, particularly the impact of oil palm industry on the indigenous people. His interest in Indonesia stemmed from a two year placement as an Australian Volunteer Abroad in 1970-2 at the Department of Anthropology at Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta, He taught anthropology there and conducted research among the indigenous Betawi communities being absorbed within a rapidly expanding city. Several years later he returned to Indonesia as a volunteer researcher at the Population Studies Institute in Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta where he coordinated a large research program on Transmigrasi resettlement programs in South Kalimantan and South Sulawesi and taught anthropology. In 1978-82 he undertook his PhD focusing on off-street and squatter communities within Yogyakarta city, and has returned many times cine then to renew contacts and research change in these communities. Following the PhD he became Advisor at the Social Sciences Foundation at Airlangga University in Surabaya, Indonesia which focused on improving the research skills of academic staff in regional universities. He then spent two years on an aid project in Tanzania, coordinating community data collection and consultation for a District water provision program before returning to Canberra to work in the Evaluations section of the Australian Development Assistance Bureau. In 1986 he returned to the ANU as a Research Fellow with the Industrialisation Project focusing on the impcat of industrialisation in two rural districts of East Java and the southern state of Johor, Malaysia. He returned to academic teaching as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at La Trobe University 1990-1993 and then as a Lecturer, Senior lecturer and Reader at the ANU from 1994. During that time he has continued his research in Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.