Winner of the 2021 Tracey Banivanua Mar PhD Prize, and one highly commended awardee, announced.
AAPS is delighted to announce the winner of the Tracey Banivanua Mar PhD Prize.
Named after the late Tracey Banivanua Mar, a Pacific historian, colleague, and friend to many within the AAPS community, the prize recognises the most outstanding PhD thesis by an AAPS student member working in the field of Pacific Studies.
This year, the judges awarded the prize to Pakeha scholar from Aotearoa/New Zealand Dr Bonnie Etherington, and her thesis “One Salt Water: Writing the Pacific Ocean in Indigenous Protest Literatures Post-1990”.
The judges had this to say about Dr Etherington’s winning thesis:
Dr Bonnie Etherington’s thesis offers an inspiring grammar for trans-indigenous and trans-Pacific literary studies, demonstrating that Oceanic creativity and storied activist work allow for the renewal and maintenance of Indigenous presences and persistence. Tracing the expression of Wansolwara, a Tok Pisin term that translates to “one ocean, one people” over the past two decades, the thesis explores the strategic deployment of this concept through the creative arts to highlight critical issues of climate change, militarisation and decolonisation. Situating herself as a non-indigenous settler New Zealander of European descent who was raised with the Kobakma community in the central highlands of West Papua, Dr Etherington later undertook tertiary studies in Turtle Island. She demonstrates the potential of Pacific acts of story-making working in historical and contemporary chorus for the purpose of regional coalition building. Her work shows what allies can do to amplify Pacific voices and meaningfully act in solidarity.
Dr Etherington effectively engages a plurality of literary texts including manuscripts, poems, songs, music videos and embodied acts to highlight Oceanic literatures’ profoundly interwoven and collaborative roots. In the thesis, she powerfully maps liberation and protest literatures from Maohi Nui to West Papua, which potently imagine political futurities through the prism of Oceanic sovereignty. One of the most profound chapters situates the notion of Wansolwara within the call for a Papua Merdeka by activists across the Pacific. As one of her examiners stated: “By calling attention to the expansive decolonial possibilities via Papuan independence, the author critiques the interconnections of settler colonialism, capitalism, labour and resource exploitation, anti-blackness, and the settler nation-state. In other words, the author utilises various literary genres to imagine alternative political possibilities that explicitly centre trans-Indigenous Oceanic connections as opposed to exclusively examining Papuan independence within Indonesia.”
The AAPS PhD Prize judging committee believe that this comprehensive literary methodology and original research is emblematic of Tracey Banivanua Mar’s scholarship and enthusiasm for threading links between colonial struggles across Oceania.
The Tracey Banivanua Mar PhD Prize comes with an award of $1000 and the opportunity to be considered for publication in the AAPS Book Series with ANU Press. We’re excited to work with Dr Etherington to develop her thesis for publication. Congratulations Dr Etherington!
More about Dr Bonnie Etherington:
Dr Bonnie Etherington is a writer, researcher, and teacher, who has recently been appointed as faculty at the School of Pacific Arts, Communication and Education at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji. Previously, she was based at the University of Colorado Boulder as the 2020-2021 Environmental Futures Postdoctoral Fellow. From 2018 to 2020, she was a Presidential Fellow at Northwestern University, where she defended her PhD dissertation in May 2020. Her academic research focuses on contemporary protest narratives, poetry, and art created by Indigenous creators from Oceania.
Dr Etherington was born in Nelson, New Zealand, but spent most of her childhood in West Papua. Her first novel, The Earth Cries Out (Vintage NZ, 2017), grew from these experiences. The Earth Cries Out was shortlisted for the 2018 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and long-listed for the 2018 New Zealand Book Awards. She received her BA(Hons) in English, and Master of Creative Writing in Fiction from Massey University. She was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2016 and her poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Malaysia. She was shortlisted for the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award in 2013 and named AA Directions’ New Travel Writer of the Year in 2011. Her work has been supported by the “Deep Horizons” Mellon Sawyer Seminar at CU Boulder, Northwestern University’s Presidential Society of Fellows, the Buffett Institute of Global Studies, and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Cluster at Northwestern.
HIGHLY COMMENDED AWARDEE
In reflection of the exceptional quality of nominations for the 2020 PhD Prize, the judges also awarded one highly commended award to Dr David Lakisa, and his thesis “Managing Pasifika Diaspora in Australian Rugby League”.
The judges had this to say about Dr Lakisa’s thesis:
This thesis was concerned with diversity management in professional rugby league football in Australia. The contributions to theory and practice made by this thesis extend beyond the NRL workplace context due to their potential application to other organisations, in terms of the need for greater shared knowledge, increased understanding and competence of Pasifika sensibilities such as familial motivations, cultural values and customs, community service and spirituality.
The study makes an important contribution to Pacific scholarship through its focus on the still under-studied Pacific diaspora in Australia and because it adopts an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates both Pacific Studies and organisational diversity management. In this way, the PhD by publication contributes to sport management scholarship in two key ways. First, it advances qualitative research into Pasifika workplace experiences in rugby league. Rugby League is a major space of social and professional participation for Pasifika males in the diaspora. Secondly, the thesis broadens psychological contract research to encompass diversity management considerations – in this case, by generating knowledge about how Pasifika employees navigate Western workplaces.
More about Dr David Lakisa:
Dr David Lakisa has worked in the education sector at various secondary, tertiary and private levels for the past 17 years. His PhD focuses on Pacific culture and workplace diversity management at the University Technology Sydney (UTS) Business School. He is currently a coordinator of religious education programs and teacher in-service in regions across Australia and the Pacific. A former PDHPE teacher at St Peter Claver College (QLD), Eagle Vale and Granville Boys High Schools, David has also been a sessional academic at Western Sydney University in the School of Education (2008-2016). In sum, David has been heavily involved in numerous research, education, government and community-based initiatives for Pacific Islanders and Maori in Australia and across the Pacific region for the past two decades.
Our Highly Commended awardee will also work towards developing his thesis for publication in the AAPS Book Series. Dr Lakisa been awarded a cash prize of $250. Congratulations Dr Lakisa!