Katerina Teaiwa
Katerina “Kati” Teaiwa has been an important part of the long genealogy of people who have made CPIS and Pacific Islands Studies as a field of study into what it is today. She earned an MA at CPIS in 1994 and went on to complete a PhD at the Australian National University. After completing her PhD in Australia, Kati returned to CPIS as an Assistant Professor, where she made several major contributions. She was a driving force and co-convener of the “Culture Moves” conference in 2005 – a collaboration between CPIS, Pacific Studies at the Victoria University of Wellington, and Te Papa Tongarewa Museum. This was the first ever international conference on dance in Oceania that brought together choreographers, scholars, and performers of traditional, contemporary, and hip hop music and dance – and it was the first time CPIS ever held its annual conference overseas. Kati’s commitment to indigenous dance, music, and culture also resulted in the publication of “Indigenous Encounters: Reflections on Relations Between People in the Pacific.” As editor of this occasional paper, Kati mentored 18 students whose work was brought together into the first publication by CPIS’s publishing program composed entirely of student work. During Kati’s time as CPIS faculty, she also made notable contributions to rethinking the Pacific Islands Studies curriculum on the Mānoa campus, pushing for more rigorous interdisciplinary approaches and drawing students more actively into conversations about growing the curriculum. These efforts laid much of the groundwork for the PACS108: Introduction to Pacific Islands Studies course offered by CPIS today. Since her time at CPIS, Kati has accomplished a distinguished record of scholarly, creative, and community work, embracing transdisciplinary approaches to histories of phosphate mining in the central Pacific, the displacement of Banabans to Fiji, and more broadly on globalization, cultural policy and dance. She is author of Consuming Ocean Island: stories of people and phosphate from Banaba. She has fulfilled multiple terms as an executive officer of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies since 2012, having served as a former President and currently serving as Vice President of the association. Kati was selected by the students of CPIS as the Keynote Speaker and Featured Guest of the 6th annual student conference (3-4 May 2018).
