About the Award

Teresia Teaiwa (1968-2017) was a feminist committed to decolonizing scholarly knowledge. Teresia’s many and diverse contributions were framed by a feminist commitment to examining the relationships between gender, militarism and the militarization of Oceania as well as by an intention to retrieve a cosmopolitan vision of Oceania that acknowledged the region as a nucleus of international politics and culture. Moreover, Teresia held a deep commitment to Pacific-oriented teaching and learning, which was especially notable in her support and mentoring of students and scholars from Oceania. Teresia’s work exemplifies the way in which the intellectual projects of Global Development Section (GDS) and Feminist Theory and Gender Studies (FTGS) are co-implicated. As a way of encouraging a closer working relationship between GDS and FTGS, and in order to honor Teresia’s commitment to Pacific scholarship, we jointly award a prize in her name to a paper written by a graduate student based in Oceania.

Read more about Teresia’s life and work here

Note: you do *not* have to be a member of ISA to be nominated. You do *not* have to present the paper at the upcoming ISA convention.

Recipient criteria

  1. Registered PhD student or equivalent studying in Oceania.
  2. The worthiness of the paper submitted
  3. Active membership of ISA.

Selection process

  1. The primary criteria for assessment will be the quality of the paper submitted.
  2. The nominations will be assessed by the award committee and the award will be presented at the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies (FTGS) Section business meeting during the ISA Annual Convention.

Prize

Recipients receive $800.00 (USD) cash prize and a certificate.

Apply for this award

  • Nominated papers should be submitted to the chair of this subcommittee, Robbie Shilliam (r.shilliam@jhu.edu).
  • Self-nominations are welcome
  • The deadline for submissions for the 2022-23 award is October 15, 2022.

Past winners

2022: Winner: I-Chang  Kuo from the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, for their essay ‘Kamapim gutpela man: Papua New Guinean and Chinese mineworkers’ changing understandings of becoming man’. The committee enjoyed this thoughtful and empirically rich ethnographic study of changing masculinities in the confined space of an oil refinery and associated homesteads in PNG. The study challenges dichotomised understandings of masculinities as traditional/modern and western/non-western, by examining the reciprocal and adaptive strategies of both PNG and Chinese mineworkers, with significant implications for the study of masculinities in PNG, the Pacific and beyond.

2021: Winner: Emma Ngakuraevaru Powell: ‘Beyond the reef: Genealogising across the Cook Islands (Māori) imaginary’. The committee was extremely impressed at the sweep of the argument, the rigorous and creative use of concepts, as well as the weaving of biography, history, and contemporary politics in the service of an expanded notion of indigenous genealogy.

Honourable Mention: Talei Lucia Mangioni, ‘Confronting Australian Apathy: Latai Taumoepeau and the Politics of Performance in Pacific Climate Stewardship’. This paper provides a salient and cutting critique of Australian dispositions towards climate change through a finely textured engagement with the artistic repertoire of Latai Taumoepeau

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