News and events
'Pacific Connections' High Level Panel
The 'Pacific Connections' High Level Panel at the European Development Days event in Warsaw, December 2011, was co-organized by the Centre for Pacific Studies, and the Pacific Division of the European Commission's European External Action Services. Pacific Connections was the first ever EDD High Level Panel organized by academic researchers, and the first ever EDD event open to the public.
Read more about the panel here.
Scholarship in Social Anthropology at the Centre for Pacific Studies
The St Andrews Centre for Pacific Studies invites applications from candidates with a doctoral research project in any field of Social Anthropology, with a regional focus on the Pacific. This fee waiver doctoral scholarship will start in September 2011 and cover tuition fees at the UK/EU rate (currently £3,732 per annum) for three years.
Post-doctoral Research Fellow
The Centre for Pacific Studies is glad to welcome Dr Jara Hulkenberg as a post-doctoral research fellow, funded by the Pacific Fund through the Prins Bernhard Cultuur Fonds in The Netherlands.
North Sea, South Seas: Research Futures in Pacific Studies
Centre for Pacific Studies, St Andrews & Bergen Pacific Studies Research Group
We held the first of these annual meetings in CPS in 2008-09 and in 2009-10 we were invited to visit the University of Bergen’s Pacific Research Group with whom we have a reciprocal agreement to go turn and turn-about to ensure continuing links between our two centres and especially to foster research synergies between our graduate students.
In March 2011 we held the 3rd meeting, details of which you can read here.
European Society for Oceanists (ESfO) 8th Conference, July 2010, Centre for Pacific Studies, St Andrews
The conference opened with the Sir Raymond Firth Memorial Lecture given by Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern (University of Cambridge) followed by a reception (with bagpipes playing) in lovely evening sunshine. Each morning’s plenary session was crowded with delegates keen to hear one of the three keynote addresses by Professor Marcia Langton (University of Melbourne), Associate Professor Vicente Diaz (University of Michigan), and the Hon. Ralph Regenvanu (Vanuatu National Cultural Council). There were 24 parallel working sessions over the four days and each evening either a dialogue or a round table.
Even with this crowded schedule there was room for some fun too, with an appropriately local flavour – a whisky-tasting (much appreciated), a ceilidh where visitors joined in traditional Scottish country dances, and finally a convivial conference dinner.
We were especially delighted to host so many delegates from Pacific island countries and to receive some great feedback. Thank you to everyone for making this such a memorable event.
Please pay a visit to the ESfO conference website.
St Andrews has negotiated an ESfO book series with Berghahn Books and will have recognition for publications arising from the conference.
We are grateful to the award of a £53K Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship that enabled James F. Weiner to visit St Andrews three times and for a total of 10 months from 2008-10. Professor Weiner is known for his work in Papua New Guinea and Australia on ethnographic studies and commercial consultancies in the contexts of resource development and native title. He is internationally recognised as a leading theoretician and practitioner in Pacific anthropology. He contributed lectures to the MRes Pacific Studies and participated in workshops and the 2010 ESfO conference. CPS would like to place on record our thanks for his stimulating contribution to CPS' intellectual project.
On June 23, 2009 the University of St Andrews awarded an Honorary Doctorate to Taufa Vakatale for services to women of Fiji and the Pacific.