Katerina Teaiwa is an Associate Professor in Pacific Studies at the School of Culture History & Language. She is of Banaban, I-Kiribati and African American descent, born and raised in Fiji.

Talei Luscia Mangioni is a Fijian and Italian PhD student undertaking written and visual research on creative and critical histories of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement.

Akil Ahamat is a Sydney-based Sri Lankan Malay arts worker and interdisciplinary artist working in sound, video and installation. His own work is driven by research into the phenomenon of ASMR and the translation of its sonic aesthetics into gallery and performance contexts.

Janelle Stevenson is an Associate Professor in the School of Culture History & Language at the Australian National University. She is a geographer and botanist by training and investigates landscape over deep time across Asia, the Pacific and Australia. She lives and works on beautiful Ngunnawal and Ngambri lands.

Bianca Hennessy is a white settler PhD student in Pacific Studies, writing about the decolonising intellectual genealogy of that academic community. Find out more

Trish Tupou is a PhD student in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University, where she currently lives and works on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land. Her research focuses on gender and land in the Pacific as well as Tongan mobilities and diasporas. In 2019, she graduated with her Master’s degree in Pacific Islands Studies from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa where she was an East-West Center fellow and Fulbright New Zealand scholar.

Uncle Wally Bell is a Ngunnawal Traditional Custodian. As Chair and Cultural Heritage Officer of Buru Ngunnawal Aboriginal Corporation, Uncle Wally Bell provides consultation and participation in the management and protection of Ngunnawal Aboriginal cultural heritage. In addition, Uncle Wally Bell cares for Country by maintaining Aboriginal sites of significance and engaging in land care, conservation and management on Country.

Natalie Harkin is a Narungga woman and activist-poet from South Australia who has worked in the Indigenous higher education sector since 1995. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at Flinders University with an interest in decolonising state archives, currently engaging archival-poetic methods to research and document Aboriginal women’s domestic service and labour histories in SA. Her words have been installed and projected in exhibitions comprising text-object-video projection, including creative-arts research collaboration with the Unbound Collective. She has published widely, including with literary journals Overland, Westerly, Southerly, The Lifted Brow, Wasafri International Contemporary Writing, TEXT and Cordite. Her poetry manuscripts include Dirty Words with Cordite Books in 2015, and Archival-poetics with Vagabond Press in 2019.

Ali Gumillya Baker is a Mirning woman from the Nullarbor and Far West Coast of South Australia, she lives and works on Kaurna country, Tarndanyangga/ Adelaide. Ali is an artist, academic and filmmaker and has an Honours degree in Visual Arts, a Masters in Screen Studies and a PhD in Australian Studies. She is a member of the Unbound Collective and a Senior Lecturer in Creative Arts within the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University.

Simone Ulalka Tur is from the Yankunytjatjara community, north-west South Australia and resides in Adelaide. Simone has undertaken leadership roles within higher education. She was the Director of Yunggorendi First Nations for Higher Education & Research, from 2011–2015 and Associate Dean, Tjilbruke Teaching & Learning within the Office of Indigenous Strategy & Engagement, 2015–2017 at Flinders University. She is now located in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences in Creative Arts. A particular focus of her leadership role involves integrating Indigenous Australian perspectives within university topics and promoting a greater understanding between Indigenous Australian peoples and the broader Australian community. She currently lectures to Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, representing her educational philosophy of privileging Indigenous cultures, languages and ideologies as a deconstruction and decolonising educational process.

Futuru Tsai is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public and Cultural Affairs, Institute of Austronesian Studies, National Taitung University. He is also the Director of the Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival. He has a PhD in Anthropology from the National Tsing Hua University. His research interests are: Visual Anthropology, Historical Anthropology, Ritual and Performance, ‘Amis People, Taiwan Indigenous War Experiences during the Pacific War (PNG), Indigenous Social Movements, and Maritime Culture among ‘Amis People. He has two books that focus on Anthropology and the Indigenous war experiences in PNG from 1943 to 1945. He has also published several award-winning documentaries. Currently, he is making a documentary on underwater spearfishing men among ‘Amis Indigenous people in eastern Taiwan titled Breathing Between.

Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Ātiawa, Taranaki) writes and teaches at the intersections of Indigenous, Pacific, literary and cultural studies. She is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Waikato. Her first book was Once Were Pacific: Maori connections to Oceania (Minnesota 2012) and her current project ‘Writing the new world: Indigenous texts 1900- 1975’ explores published writing by Indigenous people from Aotearoa, Australia, Fiji and Hawai’i. She also writes the occasional poem.

Faye Rosas Blanch is of Yidiniji/Mbarbaram descent from the Atherton Tablelands, North Queensland. Faye is Senior Lecturer in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University. She is currently engaged in her PhD which delves into the Intimacies of colonialism, sovereignty and intimate connection to country. Faye teaches the core topic in Education-- Teaching Indigenous Australian Students and Introduction to Aboriginal Studies. Faye holds a Teaching degree and Master by Research in Education, and her intellectual scholarship is informed by Indigenous education, youth, and families. Faye engages with a decolonising praxis and situates the human as important in the teaching environment, which can be dangerous at times. Faye has held the position of Teaching Coordinator, and Academic Advisor in Yunggorendi First Nations Centre. She has contributed to developing curriculum and the topic Indigenous Research Methodologies (Postgraduate). Faye is also a member of the Unbound Collective.

Maeve Powell is a Ngiyampaa woman who grew up in Sydney and Canberra with links to western New South Wales. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts/Economics from ANU in 2014. In 2017, she completed a Masters of Philosophy in Indigenous Studies at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. In 2016, she undertook the Indigenous Studies Summer Program at Columbia University in New York. She sees her academic work as situated within trans- Indigenous scholarship at the intersection of Indigenous studies and critical geography. She is interested in spatial decolonisation, urban Indigenous belonging, digital story mapping and Indigenous education. Maeve is currently a PhD scholar in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the ANU.

Leah is a Torres Strait Islander with extensive family links to the Mer, Erub, Badu and Mabuiag islands. She holds a PhD (History) and an MSc (Geography) from The University of Sydney and has worked extensively with Aboriginal and Islander peoples and communities since the mid-1980s. Her research is in Indigenous Australian histories and in recent years she has concentrated on Torres Strait material and cultural histories and performance. She is currently working with a nineteenth century ethnographic and natural history collection, exploring how Islanders can engage with the collection for remembering and performing history.

Born in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, Lisa is a descendent of the Tolai / Gunantuna people. She is a contemporary artist living in Narrm (Melbourne). Through her practice she prioritises indigenous knowledge and matrilineal systems to subvert colonial and Western histories contained within ethnographic and archival material. The representation of the black female body and the politics of hair are ongoing themes that allow her to explore, combine and disrupt the confines of photographic and textile practices. Lisa was a co-founder of the Pacifc Women’s Weaving Circle and the Contemporary Pacifc Arts Festival (2013-2015) held at Footscray Community Arts Centre. She is currently an Experience Developer at Museums Victoria.

Originally from Waimea, Hawaiʻi, Emalani Case grew up in a small town immersed in the stories and histories of her place. Coupled with her life-long training in hula, or Hawaiian chant and dance, she thus learned to see her world—each landscape, seascape, and skyscape—as being ‘storied.’ This fuelled her passion for writing and studying literature, which eventually led to her BA and MA degrees in English; to her efforts to learn to speak, write, and translate ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian Language); and eventually, to her PhD work in Pacific Studies at Victoria University of Wellington where she continued to study stories, genealogies, and ancestral connections and obligations across Oceania. Emalani now shares her love of stories and histories as a Lecturer in Pacific Studies. As a Hawaiian woman, scholar, activist, blogger, and dancer, she is deeply engaged in issues of Indigenous rights and representation, dietary colonialism and food sovereignty, political independence, and environmental and social justice.