Australian Research on Asia by Region

PACIFIC

Australian scholarship about the Pacific Islands region has developed strongly since the late 1940s. From the outset it has been a multi-disciplinary endeavour, the key disciplines being history, archeology, anthropology, linguistics, political science and economics.

Most scholars since that time have been concentrated in the Australian National University, particularly in the Research School of Pacific & Asian Studies, but over the past two decades smaller academic centres with a focus on research and teaching about the region have developed in the Universities of Queensland, New South Wales, Sydney, Wollongong, Victoria, Griffith, Macquarie, James Cook.

The quality and depth of Australian scholarship is evident in established academic journals (for example, The Journal of Pacific History and Oceania) and in the continued flourishing of professional associations. The Australian National Library has an extensive collection of Pacific materials and on-line facilities such as the 'Pacific Studies WWW Virtual Library' at the ANU are invaluable complements to research.

Concern has been expressed recently at an apparent decline in the level of teaching and research endeavour on Pacific Studies within Australian institutions (Senate Committee Report: A Pacific Engaged, August 2003). The retirement of senior scholars and imminent retirement of others has contributed in part to this decline. Initiatives, however, have been developed in various institutions to help address this concern. They include the Research Institute Asia Pacific at Sydney University, the Centre for Asia Pacific Transformation Studies at the University of Wollongong and other campuses, the State, Society & Governance in Melanesia Project and the Centre for the Contemporary Pacific both at the ANU.

While Australia has represented the epicentre of Pacific Island studies for some decades, academic centres with a partial focus on the Pacific Islands are to be found in New Zealand (Canterbury, Victoria, Otago and Auckland Universities); North America (University of Hawaii, Chicago, California - San Diego, and British Columbia); and in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Japan. Usually these consist of single or small collections of scholars - anthropologists and historians in the main - who retain connections to the Pacific Islands through periodic field visits and via discipline-based associations and journals.

Within the Pacific Islands region itself a number of small universities are engaged in undergraduate teaching in core disciplines. The University of the South Pacific has campuses and centres in most Island states and is developing research capacity in Pacific law and governance. Papua New Guinea has six public and private universities, and the French territories of New Caledonia and French Polynesia each has a small teaching university.