Winner of the 2023 Tracey Banivanua Mar PhD Prize and two highly commended awardees announced.
This prize is named after the late historian Tracey Banivanua Mar. This prestigious prize recognises the most outstanding doctoral thesis in the field of Pacific Studies across disciplinary boundaries. It honours the values that Tracey held dear. First and foremost among these is scholarly excellence; Tracey always said she had to work twice as hard to prove herself, as both female and Fijian. And those who know her work will know how insane her footnotes are; she knew the scrutiny her work would face. She also valued critical and decolonial approaches that read against the grain, into the gaps and silences of the colonial archive.
This year the judges were very impressed with the extremely high standard of the applications for this year’s Tracey Banivanua Mar’s prize. It was very difficult to make a decision for this reason.
We have awarded 1 winner ($1000) and 2 joint highly commended awardees ($250 each) and Mandy encourages all three to submit proposals to the AAPS book series. (Please email: mandy.treagus@adelaide.edu.au)
The winner is Bianca Hennessy, “The Possibilities of Decolonial Pacific Studies: Learning from an Oceanic Genealogy of Transformative Academic Practice.”
This was described as a trailblazing study of the community of Pacific Studies and how these scholars transform the way we teach and know (and be and feel). It is a work of extraordinary breadth. Bianca conducted archival work, documentary and literature analysis, interviews and participant observation across Australia, Aotearoa, Hawai‘i and Fiji. It is a beautifully written, ethical thesis that one examiner described as the “thesis Pacific Studies has been waiting for.”
The two highly commended awardees are:
Emma Powell, “‘Aka papa‘anga ara tangata: Genealogising the Cook Islands Māori Imaginary.”
Nicholas Hoare, “Re-mining Makatea: People, Politics, and Phosphate Rock.’
Congratulations to all the winners and to their supervisors. Tracey would have loved all these theses and we wish she could have been here to read them.