Teresia Teaiwa is an I-Kiribati and American poet and academic.

The University of Oregon describes her as “a groundbreaking scholar in the research of the culture of the Pacific Islands”.   Teaiwa was born in Honolulu to an I-Kiribati father and an African American mother.   She was  subsequently raised in Fiji.

She obtained a PhD in History of Consciousness at the University of California in 2001, on the topic “Militarism, Tourism and the Native: Articulations in Oceania”. 

She taught history and politics for five years at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, before moving to New Zealand to teach Pacific studies at Victoria University of Wellington.  She is currently a Senior Lecturer and Programme Director at Victoria University.  She is also co-editor of the International Feminist Journal of Politics.  The Guardian in April 2009 described her as one of Kiribati’s “living national icons”.

Qualifications

BA Trin Coll Wash, MA Hawai’i, PhD UCSC

Current Research

• Continuing research into gendered dynamics of militarism in the Pacific
• Continuing research into theory, practice and pedagogy of Pacific Studies
• Associate of the Victoria Centre for Applied Cross-Cultural Research

Partial bibliography

Academic

• James Liu, Tim McCreanor, Tracey McIntosh and Teresia Teaiwa (eds), New Zealand Identities: Departures and Destinations. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2005.

Literary

• Teresia Teaiwa, Searching for Nei Nim’anoa (poetry), 1995, ISBN-BC306
• Teresia Teaiwa, I can see Fiji: poetry and sound (CD of poetry), featuring Des Mallon, sound design by Hinemoana Baker
• Vilsoni Hereniko and Teresia Teaiwa, Last virgin in paradise : a serious comedy, 2001, ISBN 9820203171
• Teresia Teaiwa, “Real Natives Talk about Love” (creative non-fiction), in Niu Voices: Contemporary Pacific Fiction 1. Wellington: Huia, 2006: 35-40. ISBN 1-86969-254-3