UHM Center for Pacific Islands Studies | CPIS

Foley Pfalzgraf

 

Foley Pfalzgraf

Outreach Director
MSc University of Oxford (2016), MA University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (2020)

Moore 215
foleycp@hawaii.edu
(808) 956-2202

Foley joined the center in February 2022 to serve as Outreach Director. She holds a BA in international studies from the American University; an MSc in nature, society, and environmental governance from the University of Oxford; and an MA in geography and environment from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM). She is currently pursuing a certificate in Pacific Islands studies and is a PhD candidate in UHM’s Department of Geography and Environment. Her research focuses on the extent to which climate adaptation and mitigation mechanisms, such as REDD+, are meeting the needs of communities in Vanuatu. She gained grant writing, management, and evaluation experience through her work as a program specialist for the Hawai‘i Alliance for Community-Based Economic Development (HACBED). Before working as staff at HACBED, she completed two years of service as an AmeriCorps VISTA member in Honolulu. She also brings experience in event planning and coordination as well as social media outreach from working in Washington, DC as a public lands intern at the Sierra Club, a post-conflict natural resource management intern for the Environmental Law Institute, and as archival intern and then assistant to the social secretary at the British Embassy.

Teaching Areas and Interests

Environmental Politics in Oceania

Research Areas and Interests

Vanuatu
Climate Adaptation and Mitigation
Climate Justice
REDD+
Forestry
Colonialism
Conservation

Selected Works

  • 2021     From Colonial Science to Climate Capacity Building: Analyzing Uneven Access to Climate Knowledge in Vanuatu. Geoforum 124 (August): 165–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.05.020.
  • 2021     Maintaining Land and Life in Vanuatu: Indigenous Alter-Natives of Recovery Following the Manaro Eruption on Ambae, Vanuatu. The Journal of Environmental Media 2(1): 5.1-5.13. https://doi.org/10.1386/jem_00053_1.
  • 2019     Dispossession and the Environment: Rhetoric and Inequality in Papua New Guinea by Paige West (Review). The Contemporary Pacific 32 (1): 294–97. https://doi.org/10.1353/cp.2020.0027.

Recent and Current Projects

  • Editorial Board, The Contemporary Pacific
  • Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award, “Carbon Trapping – The Politics of Assembling Climate Interventions in Vanuatu”