Katerina is an interdisciplinary scholar, artist and award winning teacher of Banaban, I-Kiribati and African American heritage born and raised in Fiji. She is Professor of Pacific Studies in the School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Katerina was founder and convener of the first Pacific Studies teaching program at ANU, Head of Gender, Media and Cultural Studies in CHL, founder of the ANU Pasifika Australia Outreach Program, and co-founder and co-chair of the ANU Family Friendly Committee. From 2020-2022 she was Deputy Director – Higher Degree Research Training in CHL. She has led CHL’s Flagship project on Decolonial Possibilities combining workshops, film production, education resources, and ECR support.
Katerina’s commentary on Pacific issues has been published in the Conversation, Sydney Morning Herald, the Guardian, Inside Story, New York Times, the ABC, Foreign Affairs and Australian Outlook. She has been a consultant with the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, Australian Museum, UNESCO & DFAT on cultural policy and sustainable development, and Austraining International and ANU Enterprise on cross cultural and development training for Australian Volunteers International. You can view her TedX talk on the Blue Pacific and a safe, clean, fair future here. From 2020-2022 she served on the Board of New Zealand’s Pacific Cooperation Foundation.
Katerina also has a background in contemporary Pacific dance and was a founding member of the Oceania Dance Theatre at the University of the South Pacific. She is currently a practising visual artist with an ongoing research-based exhibition Project Banaba originally commissioned by Carriageworks, Sydney, and curated by Yuki Kihara. Her exhibition focuses on the environmental, political and cultural impacts of historical phosphate mining and has been shown in Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Her 3-screen film, Mine Lands: for Teresia, has been shown in Hong Kong, Kathmanu and Brisbane.
Katerina was President of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies 2012-2017 and is currently Vice-President. She is Chair of the Oceania Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Editor and Art Editor for The Contemporary Pacific: an interdisciplinary journal, and editorial board member of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, and Postcolonial Studies.
She is General Co-Editor for a new 6 volume series with Bloomsbury on “A New Cultural History of Oceania: sixty thousand years” with Professor Kate Fullagar.
In 2019 Katerina was awarded the College of Asia and the Pacific’s Teaching Excellence Award. The Pacific Women’s Professional and Business Network of NSW awarded her “Educator 2020”. In 2022 she won two national teaching excellence awards from Universities Australia including the overall “Australian University Teacher of the Year 2021.”
This page has been updated in October 2024.
