Faculty of Asian Studies, The Australian National University

Pacific Studies Convener Interests: Phosphate mining in Kiribati, contemporary Pacific dance studies, cultural industries and cultural policy, visual ethnography, theory and method for Pacific Studies. Email: Katerina.Teaiwa@anu.edu.au Phone: + 61 2 6125 4323 Fax: + 61 2 6125 0745 Room: e429 Baldessin Precinct Building

Contents 1 Qualifications 2 Research 3 Teaching 4 Outreach 5 Selected Publications 5.1 Edited collections 5.2 Book Chapters 5.3 Journals 5.4 Book manuscript 5.5 Internet 6 Contributions to the field 7 Pacific News

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Katerina is of Banaban, I-Kiribati, and African American descent, born and raised in Fiji. In her current capacity as Pacific Studies Convener, Katerina coordinates ANU's extensive resources on the Pacific region to create integrated Pacific Studies teaching programs, specialised graduate and undergraduate courses, and Australia's first undergraduate Pacific Studies major.

Qualifications

• Ph.D in Anthropology, Australian National University
• M.A. in Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, USA
• B.S. in Combined Sciences, Santa Clara University, USA

Research

Much of Katerina's research has focused on the histories of phosphate mining on Banaba/Ocean Island in Kiribati, and the ways in which these connect with the development of agriculture in Australia and New Zealand through the work of the British Phosphate Commissioners. She specifically looked at the movement of Banaban rock and the kinds of organic and inorganic relations created by the shipping, production and consumption of phosphate. In turn, she also looked at the ways in which indigenous Banabans make sense of this history and survive creatively in their new home of Rabi in Fiji. Her work has inspired a permanent exhibition at the Museum of New Zealand's Te Papa Tongarewa, which tells the story of phosphate mining in the Pacific through Banaban dance. She also writes on and has taught courses about popular culture and consumption, globalization, women's studies, contemporary Pacific dance studies, Pacific diasporas, visual ethnography, and theory and method for Pacific Studies. She is interested in the relations between island regions and from 2003-07 she was a member of the Islands of Globalization project team which connected the Pacific and the Caribbean through popular, policy and pedagogy projects. She is currently working on cultural policy and cultural industries in the Pacific following UNESCO frameworks and conventions.

Teaching

In addition to running the Pacific Studies Program, Katerina teaches two key Pacific Studies courses, the undergraduate core course PASI2001/6001 Learning Oceania: an introduction to Pacific Studies and PASI3001/8001 The Contemporary Pacific: Society, Politics and Development at postgraduate level.

Outreach

Katerina regularly coordinates Pacific cross-cultural and development training for the Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development program supported by ANU Enterprise, Austraining and AusAID. She also runs the debrief sessions for returned AYADs or RAYADs from the Pacific. She is currently overseeing Pasifika Australia, funded by an ANU Equity Grant in partnership with the ANU Learning Communities project based in Bruce Hall and, specifically, the Asia-Pacific Learning Community. This project is focused on raising awareness about Pacific Studies and Pacific communities in Australia, and reaching out to Pacific Islanders at the high school and college level in the ACT and greater NSW. Pacific Studies assistant Edward Boydell is coordinating the project.

Katerina is also on the Board of renowned performance artist Padma Menon's Shared Spaces Inc., a community based arts initiative focused on social transformation.

Selected Publications

Edited collections

• Indigenous Encounters: reflections on relations between people in the Pacific, Center for Pacific Islands Studies Occasional Paper Series, University of Hawaii, No. 43 (2007).
• Margins and Migrations in South Asian Diasporas, with Monisha Das Gupta and Charu Gupta, special issue of journal Cultural Dynamics, 19 (2) University of Texas and Sage (2007).

Book Chapters

• “Salt Water Feet: the flow of dance in Oceania,” in Deep Blue: reflections on nature, religion and water, Andrew Francis and Slyvie Shaw eds., London, Equinox Publishing Ltd., (2008).
• “Teaiwa’s Kainga,” in One and a half Pacific Islands: stories the Banaban people tell of themselves, Jennifer Shennan and Makin Corrie, eds., Wellington: Victoria University Press (2005).
• “Our Sea of Phosphate: the diaspora of Ocean Island,” in Indigenous Diasporas and Dislocations: Unsettling Western Fixations, Graham Harvey and Charles D. Thompson Jr, eds., London: Ashgate Press (2005).
• “Multi-Sited Methodologies: homework between Fiji, Australia and Kiribati,” in Anthropologists in the Field, Jane Mulcock and Lynne Hume, eds., New York: Columbia University Press (2004).

Journals

• Islands of Globalization: Pacific and Caribbean Perspectives, with Esther Figueroa, Gerard Finin, Scott Kroeker and Terence Wesley-Smith, in Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 56, Nos 1 and 2, March/ June 32-40 (2007).
• On Sinking, Swimming, Floating, Flying and Dancing: the Potential of Cultural Industries in the Pacific Islands, in Pacific Economic Bulletin, Vol. 22 (2) 140-151 (2007).
• Rethinking South Asian Diaspora Studies, with Monisha Das Gupta and Charu Gupta, in Cultural Dynamics, special issue, University of Texas and Sage 19 (2) 125-140 (2007).
• South Asia Down Under: Popular Kinship in Oceania, in Cultural Dynamics, special issue, University of Texas and Sage, 19 (2): 193-232 (2007).
• Personalising Pacific Studies: Strategies for Imagining Oceania, with Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka Surfing Our Sea of Islands: the Politics of Imagination, in SPAN (South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language) Vol 50/51, Larry Thomas and Robert Nicole, eds., University of the South Pacific, 2001: 14 (2001).
• Banaban Island: Paying the Price for Other People’s Development, in IWGIA, Journal of the International Work Group on Indigenous Affairs, Nic Maclellan and Diana Vinding, eds. Denmark, 1/2000: 38 (2000).
• Body-Shop Banabans and Skin-Deep Samaritans, in the Pacific Science Information Bulletin, Nancy Lewis, ed., Vol.49, No.3/4, September/December (1997).

Book manuscript

• Between our Islands: a multi-sited ethnography of Banaban phosphate, invited for submission to the Pacific Monograph Series, Center for Pacific Islands Studies and University of Hawai'i Press.

Internet

• Dance in Oceania: a historical context for Dances of Life (a documentary film) (2005)
  • Haka in Aotearoa/ New Zealand
  • American Samoa: Fa‘a Samoa and the Dance
  • Guam: an island seeks rebirth of Chamorro Culture
  • New Caledonia showcases both traditional and contemporary Pacific dance
  • Palau: women lead Palau and its cultural arts
  • Reflections on dance: where there is movement, there is life
• Pacific Islanders in Communication

Contributions to the field

• Katerina's networking and research trip to Fiji
• Katerina organised the recent Oceanic Connections conference
• Read her article, Ignorance rife about Islander Australians, published in the Canberra Times on 29 October 2007
• She has been interviewed on Radio Austalia's In the Loop
• In 2005 she organised Culture Moves!, a Pacific Studies dance conference. Watch coverage of this conference, as broadcast by Television New Zealand's Tagata Pasifika