Work of researchers of the Future of Rainforest Peoples programme with Pawaia people in the Pio-Tura region is directed according to the model of Sites of Intensive Interdisciplinary Research. Research is co-ordinated through the University of Kent at Canterbury and the National Research Institute of Papua New Guinea. It is a social research programme running parallel to biological monitoring by conservation biologists working through the Research and Conservation Foundation, a Papua New Guinea-based Non-Governmental Organisation involved in conservation initiatives in the area. In this way, it is a collaboration between biological and social sciences.

Each stage of research is negotiated with local people – in this sense its themes and structure are guided by them.

The principal aims of research with Pawaia people in this area are:

1. To make an assessment of the livelihood of local people, with a particular focus on human ecology and ethnography in a diachronic perspective.
2. To review representations of Pawaia people by those who came to their land from outside throughout recorded history.
3. To document local concerns in the ‘development’ process and indigenous perceptions of development and change.
4. To record the social impact of logging negotiations and their effects.
5. To make an evaluation of the ‘Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area’ project and its impact on local people, and to make recommendations for the integration of human concerns into the methodology and practice of conservation programmes.