About Us

UH Mānoa Center for Pacific Islands Studies (UH CPIS)

The Center for Pacific Islands Studies, in the University of Hawai‘i–Mānoa School of Pacific and Asian Studies, is both an academic department and a larger home for initiatives that bring together people and resources to promote an understanding of the Pacific Islands and issues of concern to Pacific Islanders. Its innovative instructional program is regional, comparative, and interdisciplinary in nature. The university’s Pacific Collection, one of the most comprehensive collections of Pacific materials in the world, attracts a worldwide audience, as do the center’s international conferences, its Web-based resources, its Pacific Islands Monograph Series, and its award-winning journal, The Contemporary Pacific. Working with scholars at institutions in the region and elsewhere, faculty at the center are seeking new ways to encompass a deeper understanding of a region whose boundaries are constantly expanding.

Pacific Islands Development Program (PIDP)

The Pacific Islands Development Program (PIDP) conducts a broad range of activities to enhance the quality of life in the Pacific islands. In 1980, under the visionary leadership of Fiji Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara and Hawaii Governor George Ariyoshi, a special East-West Center program was formed to specifically address the unique issues island nations face as they emerge from decades of colonization. The founding mission of PIDP is to assist Pacific Islands’ leaders to advance their collective efforts to achieve and sustain equitable social and economic development.

About Us: Sponsors

Student Conference Planning Committee & Volunteers

Mahalo nui! Mālō 'aupito! Kammagar! Tēnā koutou!

Joshua Uipi

PhD Candidate & Lecturer, American Studies

Department of American Studies

College of Arts, Languages, & Letters

University of Hawaiʻi–Mānoa

Joshua J.T. Uipi is a PhD candidate in American studies and an instructor for the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawai‘i–Mānoa. His research is centered on Tongan diasporic communities in the US, race and racism, and Indigenous studies. Joshua’s work explores Western imperialism in the Pacific, Tongan movement to the US, and the navigation of cultural and social aspects of American society by Tongan communities. Joshua’s family lineage traces to Fakakai, Ha‘apai and ‘Uiha, Ha‘apai in the Kingdom of Tonga.

Amy Sojot

PhD Candidate & Lecturer, Educational Foundations
Department of Educational Foundations
College of Education
University of Hawaiʻi–Mānoa

Amy Sojot is a PhD candidate in the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Hawai‘i–Mānoa and a graduate assistant with the Center for Pacific Islands Studies. Using interdisciplinary approaches, Amy’s research addresses contemporary educational assumptions through philosophy, political theory, cultural studies, and pop-cultural critique. Her dissertation explores how sensations can generate open-ended pedagogies and circumvent constrictive approaches to the body in education. Particularly fond of science fiction and its creative capacity for philosophical inquiry, Amy contributed a chapter to Childhood, Science Fiction, and Pedagogy: Children Ex Machina (2019, Springer Singapore). Her work has also appeared in Policy Futures in Education and Educational Philosophy and Theory.

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Shannon Pōmaikaʻi Hennessey

MA Student & Graduate Assistant, Pacific Islands Studies

Center for Pacific Islands Studies

College of Arts, Languages, & Letters
University of Hawaiʻi–Mānoa

Shannon Pōmaikaʻi Hennessey is a woman of Kanaka Maoli, Chinese, Irish, and Portuguese descent from Honolulu, Oʻahu. She is currently an MA student and graduate assistant with the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi–Mānoa, and previously received her BA in history and American studies from the University of Notre Dame. She is interested in issues of identity and authenticity, race, gender, everyday practices of resurgence, and Indigenous methodologies.

Korerotia Mai Te Reo Williams

MA Student & Graduate Assistant, Pacific Islands Studies

Center for Pacific Islands Studies

College of Arts, Languages, & Letters
University of Hawaiʻi–Mānoa

Korerotia Waetford-Williams is an artist, scholar, and critical thinker. He is also a graduate assistant and MA student in Pacific studies at the University of Hawaiʻi–Mānoa. Korerotia was born in Aotearoa, New Zealand and raised as a son of - tangata o le moana. He graduated with his BA in Pacific studies, international relations, and education at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington. He completed multiple programs and academic exchanges contributing to his degree at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji, UH Mānoa, and the University of Auckland. He completed his honours degree in international relations at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington with a focus on decolonization methodology and education for Pacific peoples in the South Pacific. He is an emerging academic with experience across Oceania. He comes not as one but as many, remembering those who have come before him, who have passed their torch unto him to continue their good works.

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Axel J. Defngin

MA Student & Graduate Assistant, Pacific Islands Studies

Center for Pacific Islands Studies

College of Arts, Languages, & Letters
University of Hawaiʻi–Mānoa

Axel Defngin is a graduate assistant at Center for Pacific Islands Studies and an MA student in Pacific Islands studies at University of Hawaiʻi–Mānoa. Axel was born and raised in Hilo, Hawaiʻi, and is from the island of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia. He graduated with a BA in Pacific Islands studies from University of Hawaiʻi–Hilo. Axel is an active contributor to various organizations serving Pacific Islander communities including the Remathau Community of Hawaiʻi, APIA Scholars Advisory Committee, and The Fourth Branch–Micronesia.

Foley Pfalzgraf

Coordinator

Student Conference Planning Committee

Outreach Director

Center for Pacific Islands Studies

University of Hawaiʻi–Mānoa

Foley Pfalzgraf is the Outreach Director at the Center for Pacific Islands Studies. She is also a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawaiʻi–Mānoa. Supported by a Fulbright-Hays award, her dissertation research interrogates the role of nature-based solutions, particularly carbon forest offsetting, in Vanuatu and the extent to which these programs are able to meaningfully provide climate justice. She draws inspiration from theories in Pacific studies, political ecology, and STS. Foley has experience working in community-based economic development in Hawaiʻi as well as at environmental nonprofits. She received her BA in international studies from American University, an MSc in nature, society, and environmental governance from the University of Oxford, and an MA in geography from the University of Hawaiʻi.

Dr. Alexander Mawyer

Advisor

Student Conference Planning Committee

CPIS Director, Acting CPIS Chair & Associate Professor

Center for Pacific Islands Studies

College of Arts, Languages, & Letters

University of Hawaiʻi–Mānoa

Alexander Mawyer is an associate professor for Pacific Islands Studies, editor of The Contemporary Pacific: A Journal of Island Affairs, and codirector of the University of Hawai‘i’s Biocultural Initiative of the Pacific. He has served as the director for the Center for Pacific Islands Studies since August 2021. He has conducted fieldwork with the Mangarevan community in the Gambier and Society Islands of French Polynesia and with Chuukese and Mortlock communities in the Federated States of Micronesia. His work has focused on language at the intersection of culture, nature, and history. He served as one of the coeditors of Varua Tupu: New Writing from French Polynesia, the first anthology of Ma‘ohi literature to appear in English and 2007 winner of the Hawai‘i Book Publishers Award for Excellence in Literature. His publications cover a diverse range of topics including coediting a special issue of Ethos: Journal for the Society for Psychological Anthropology devoted to culture and spatial cognition in Oceania. More recently, he has published on the semantics of natural kinds and landscape terms in Eastern Polynesian languages including forests, insular fresh waters, Tahitian practices of marine resource governance, and issues of conservation and sovereignty. Recently he was invited to serve as an adviser to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) West Hawai‘i Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA).