Thirteen Ecocritical Takes on the Transpacific
Book review: Empire and Environment: Ecological Ruin in the Transpacific. Edited by Jeffrey Santa Ana, Heidi Amin-Hong, Rina Garcia Chua and Zhou Xiaojing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022.
and Dr Kjell Ericson
"The Seed Oyster Inspectors: Labour and Power in Trans-Pacific Tidelands, 1945-1970s"
Dr Matther M. Booker and Dr Kjell Ericson talked to us about how they use movements of oysters to trace trans-Pacific patterns and practices of labour, migration, and environmental change.
Indigenous Histories of Encounters in Asia-Pacific
Report from the conference "Indigenous Histories of Encounters in Asia-Pacific" (Wolfson College, Cambridge, 19-20 June), which was sponsored by The Pacific Circle.
The Pacific Circle warmly congratulates its former President, Professor Warwick Anderson (University of Sydney) on the award of the 2023 Bernal Prize.
Re-centring South Polynesian Pūrākau (Ancestral Narratives)
Dr Madi Williams (University of Canterbury) talked to us about the boundaries of history and the inclusion of Indigenous and non-Western perspectives in Aotearoa New Zealand and South Pacific histories.
Time Has Come to a Stop: Temporalities of Loss and Resistance on the West Papuan Plantation Frontier
Dr Sophie Chao (University of Sydney) talked to us about how Indigenous Marind communities in West Papua sense and make sense of the temporal transformations wrought by the agroindustrial expansion of oil palm plantations.
On Bezoars and Other Healing Stones in Manila: Making Knowledge Across Indo-Pacific Worlds, c.1700
Dr Sebestian Kroupa (University of Cambridge) talked to us about the Indo-Pacific networks that underpinned the global circulation of bezoars and other healing stones in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
‘The Miracle of Ice from Heat’: Mechanical Cold in Pacific History
Dr Frances Steel (University of Otago) talked to us about her new research project, which examines how the industrial innovation of chilling or freezing perishable produce transformed relationships between climates, foods, and peoples in the modern Pacific.
‘Scientific Occupation’ and the Timor Anthropological Mission in the Late Portuguese Colonial Empire
Dr Ricardo Roque (University of Lisbon) talked to us about the histories of the anthropometric and racialized projects undertaken by Portuguese imperial expeditions in East Timor, including their enduring legacies today.
Nuclear Weapons and the Unsettling of Sovereignty in the Marshall Islands, 1944-1963
Dr Mary X Mitchell (University of Toronto) talked to us about the sociolegal history of US nuclear blasting in the Marshall Islands, focusing on how Islanders and others used legal claims to challenge US blasting and reshaped US power in the process.
New issue of the Pacific Circle Newsletter (4.9) was published on 1 January.
The Pacific Circle was established in 1985 to support and promote research and exchanges in the history of science, medicine, and other practices of knowledge in the Asia-Pacific region, broadly construed. We take knowledge to encompass a cross-cultural diversity of beliefs about the workings of the universe and the command of a myriad of techniques applied to investigations and manipulations of worldly phenomena.
As of Fall 2025, Pacific Circle has resumed operations and is working to provide new offerings to our members.
