Prize win for Victoria PhD candidate
Jess situates the essay amidst the Pacific Studies contexts and scholarship that influenced Clifford's thinking, including Clifford’s relationships with what he calls his "island-savvy" doctoral supervisees. Among those supervisees were Jess's original primary supervisor, the late Teresia Teaiwa, and her current primary supervisor, April K Henderson.
Jess Marinaccio says her interest in Pacific Studies grew from working at the Tuvaluan Embassy in Taiwan.
“I grew up in in the States. I majored in Chinese, moved to Taiwan and did my Master’s in Chinese Literature. Then I ended up working at Tuvalu’s embassy in Taiwan. I got really interested in Tuvalu but there’s not a lot of information about it.
“The Tuvaluan ambassador’s son and daughter-in-law are both at Victoria and they talked about it all the time, so I did some research and saw that the Pacific Studies programme here was very well known. I contacted them about doing my PhD, and got a very enthusiastic and supportive response.”
Jess says that from a PhD perspective it’s valuable to have this very strong community to draw from.
“There are so many resources and people that know this department. All you have to do is say Pacific studies at Victoria and people are like ‘oh, of course I can help you’—that just doesn’t happen elsewhere. I think that this kind of collaborative style is important for doing research that is responsible.”