Symposium of ARC Laureate Project

Engendering Persons, Transforming Things

Epeli Hau’ofa inspired us to think about the Pacific in expansive terms, not as small, isolated islands diminished by colonialism, development and globalisation but through the connecting ocean of both indigeneity and diaspora, through transnational connections and flows of people, things, ideas and values. But large challenges remain in how we do research in Oceania, in negotiating the relation between indigenous and introduced languages and knowledges and in conceptualising ‘worlding’ in Oceania beyond monolithic and monochromatic views of globalisation.

Worlding Oceania focuses on these philosophical and political challenges through a transdisciplinary lens to explore questions about how Christianities and commodity economics have been indigenised in the Pacific, about their imbricated but contested relation in both colonial and contemporary epochs and how this has transformed ideals and practices of gendered personhood in Oceania.

Public Lectures - to be given at 5.30pm on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings in the APCD Lecture Theatre

• Margaret Jolly (Australian National University): Engendering the Anthropocene: Horizons and Rifts in Conversations about Climate Change in Oceania
• Robert J. Foster (University of Rochester): Our Sea of Islands in the Era of Mobile Phones: A View from Papua New Guinea
• Katerina Teaiwa (Australian National University): Indigenous Remix in Oceania

Registration: online

A full program can be obtained by contacting nicholas.mortimer@anu.edu.au