Katerina Teaiwa

Biography

Katerina Teaiwa is Professor of Pacific Studies in the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University. She is a scholar, artist, teacher and activist of Banaban (Tabiang and Tabwewa), I-Kiribati (Tabiteuea Meang) and African American heritage born and raised in Fiji. Her research-based exhibition, Project Banaba, has been shown at Carriageworks, Sydney, MTG Hawke’s Bay, Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary, Auckland, and the Bishop Museum, Honolulu. Her 2025 exhibition responding to Australian-American dancer Beth Dean’s collections, “Dance Protest”, was shown in the Penelope gallery of the Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney. Teaiwa critically reflects on her research with Indigenous and Pasifika women scholar-artists in “Reimagining the Humanities through Indigenous Creative Arts” (ARC Indigenous Discovery IN220100080).

Teaiwa is Editor of The Contemporary Pacific: an Interdisciplinary Journal, Co-Chair of the Oceania Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vice-President of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies and Trustee of the Pacific Academy of Sciences. In 2022 Teaiwa won two national teaching excellence awards at the Australian Awards for University Teaching, Universities Australia, including the overall University Teacher of the Year 2021.