Sinclair Dinnen has a background in socio-legal studies and completed his PhD at ANU in 1996. His doctoral research was undertaken in Papua New Guinea while he was a research fellow at the National Research Institute (1992-1995). This research was published as Law and Order in a Weak State: Crime and Politics in Papua New Guinea (University of Hawai’i Press, 2001). 

He has longstanding research interests in regulatory pluralism, comparative criminology, justice and policing, conflict and peacebuilding, post-colonial state formation and development studies.  Sinclair has published in leading journals including Oceania, Contemporary Pacific, Third World Quarterly, Policing & Society, Conflict, Security & Development, International Peacekeeping, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Development and Change,  and Third World Thematics, as well as book chapters , and has also co-edited seven books including, most recently, Hybridity on the Ground In Peacebuilding and Development (ANU Press, 2018).