The Epeli Hau’ofa Annual Memorial Lecture:
Dr Epeli Hau’ofa was a Tongan scholar, as well as the founder and director of the Oceania Center for Arts and Culture at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji. He spent much of his life living in many places across the Pacific, including Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Australia and Fiji. The Epeli Hau’ofa Annual Public Lecture was established by the Australian Association of Pacific Studies (AAPS) in 2015 with permission from Epeli’s wife Barbara Hau’ofa, to honour the late Dr Epeli Hau’ofa’s profound intellectual and creative impact on Australian Pacific Studies and trans-disciplinary Pacific studies more broadly. Over the years, AAPS has hosted a number of critical and compelling lectures by leading scholars in Pacific Studies in commemoration of Dr Epeli Hau’ofa.
Timeline of Past Speakers:
2024 – Reverend James Shri Bhagwan, “The Ocean is Us”, at the Australian Museum, Sydney. Transcript available here.
2023 – Intergenerational talanoa with Dame Meg Taylor, Tuiloma Neroni Slade, Former President Anote Tong, Moemoana Schwenke, Itinterunga Rae Bainteiti, Jope Tarai and Prof. Katerina Teaiwa, “Intergenerational Wisdom of the Blue Pacific” at the Australian National University, Canberra.
2022 – Professor Jioji Ravulo, “Decoloniality, Desistance, Resistance & Reclamation: striving for social justice & inclusive societies”, at the University of Adelaide, South Australia.
2021 – Panel conversation with Associate Professor Alice Te Punga Somerville, Dr Melinda Mann and Dion Sarasopa Enari, “Decolonisation and the Trans-Pacific Academy – Indigenous perspectives”, at Footscray Arts Centre, Victoria.
2020 – Conference cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic.
2019 – Dr Frances C. Koya Vaka’uta, “Oceania Dreaming: Reflections on Epeli Hau’ofa’s legacy at the University of the South Pacific”, at QAGOMA, Queensland.
2018 – Associate Professor Vicente Diaz, “Backing into the Future, Transindigenous Sea, River, Plains, and Skyfaring Between Faichuuk in the Caroline Islands and Miní Sóta Makhóčhe in the Eastern Plains” at the University of Adelaide, South Australia.
2017 – Associate Professor Tēvita O. Ka’ili, “”In the Beginning was the Ocean”: Pacific Cosmogony in Epeli Hauʻofa’s Oceania and Disneyʼs Moana” at Melbourne Museum, Victoria.
2016 – Dr Peter Brunt, “Dwelling in Travel: Indigeneity, Cosmopolitanism and Island Modernism” at Macquarie University, New South Wales.
2015 – Associate Professor Tracey Banivanua-Mar, “Black Australia: Entangled histories on Queensland’s canefields” at the Cairns Institute at James Cook University, Queensland.