Category: Faculty

Department of Linguistics (emeritus)
lylecamp [at] hawaii [dot] edu

Bio: Lyle Campbell grew up in rural Oregon. He received a B.A. in Archaeology and Anthropology in 1966, M.A. in Linguistics (University of Washington) in 1967, and Ph.D. in Linguistics (UCLA) in 1971.

Campbell held appointments at the University of Missouri (1971–1974), the State University of New York at Albany (1974–1989), Louisiana State University (1989–1994), the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand (1994–2004), the University of Utah (2004–2010), and currently the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. He has been a visiting professor at Australian National University, Colegio de México, Memorial University, University of Hamburg, University of Helsinki, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Universidad del País Vasco, University of Turku, and at three universities in Brazil. He has held joint appointments in Linguistics, Anthropology, Behavioral Research, Latin American Studies, and Spanish.More…

Department of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences
jdeenik [at] hawaii [dot] edu

Bio: Jonathan Deenik received his BA in History and Art History (College of Wooster) and then joined the Peace Corps where is served as a teacher and teacher trainer in the forest of southern Cameroon (’85-’87) and remote central Nepal (’87-’91). He came to Hawaii in 1992 and completed his MS and PhD degrees at Manoa in Soil Science. He joined the Dept of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences in 2003 with a three-way split (extension, research and instruction). His work focuses on soil nutrient management and soil quality across the spectrum of tropical agroecosystems. He works with farmers throughout the Hawaiian Islands and Micronesia.

Projects: Jonathan works closely with graduate students and extension agents to help farmers match nutrient inputs to cropping systems and soil and climatic conditions to maintain target yields while enhancing the soil resource and minimizing negative impacts to air and water quality. His work also includes identifying and promoting the utilization of alternative soil amendments from waste (sewage sludge conversion to biochar, biofertilizers from anaerobic digestion, and composting) in farming systems across the Pacific. Most recently, Jonathan has worked in a large USDA funded obesity prevention project throughout the US Affiliated Pacific. His focus has been on studying the Pacific agroforest systems, their management and their role in the food system in a time of rapid social, economic and environmental change.

Department of Botany
ogaoue [at] hawaii [dot] edu

Research in my lab is at the interface of population ecology and ethnoecology and uses mathematical models, field observations and experiments as well as ethnographic methods to study plant-human interactions. I am interested in basic ecological questions with implications for the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. My research emphasizes the role of environmental stochasticity on the response of ecological systems to perturbation. In terms of environmental stochasticity, I focus on both stochastic temporal variation in the ecological conditions in which plants occur and stochasticity in the behavior of human (or any agent) who interact with these resources. I tend to focus on plant populations. However, I am developing new projects to investigate the effects of perturbation and fragmentation on plant-insect mutualism. Here in Hawaii, the focus of the lab will be on the population viability analysis of endangered plants.More…

Department of Anthropology
golub [at] hawaii [dot] edu

Bio: Alex Golub has degrees in anthropology from Reed College (BA) and the University of Chicago (MA and Ph.D.). He is a political anthropologist who studies the Porgera gold mine in Papua New Guinea and its relationship with the local community on whose land it is located. His book Leviathans at the Gold Mine: Creating Indigenous and Corporate Actors at the Porgera Gold Mine was published by Duke University Press in 2014. More broadly, he is interested in social change and resource extraction as they relate to cultural sustainability. In addition to political anthropology and Pacific studies, he has an interest in 20th century intellectual history.More…

Department of Linguistics
holton [at] hawaii [dot] edu

As a documentary linguist my work focuses on creating a lasting record of endangered human languages, particularly the non-Austronesian (Papuan) languages of eastern Indonesia and the Dene (Athabascan) languages of Alaska. Most of these languages are in danger of disappearing, and their systematic documentation preserves endangered knowledge systems while also contributing to an understanding of the diversity of human languages. My approach to language documentation is holistic and relies crucially on trans-disciplinary, collaborative methodologies. [website]

Projects:

• Traditional ecological knowledge of Abui (NSF BCS-1535763) (supplement to the project Alor-Pantar Languages: Origins and Theoretical Impact)
• Documenting Gwich’in Indigenous astronomy (NSF OPP-1317245)
• Linking maps, manuscripts, and place names data to improve environmental knowledge in Alaska (NSF OPP-1415603)

Department of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences
nlincoln [at] hawaii [dot] edu

Bio: Noa Lincoln is kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian) and kama’aina (native born) to Kealakekua on Hawai’i Island. His childhood consists of unique training by Hawaiian elders in la’au lapa’au (ethnobotany) and traditional management methods for agriculture and ocean resources. Dr. Lincoln completed his formal trainings at Yale University (ʻ03) in Environmental Engineering and Stanford University (ʻ13) in Biogeochemistry and Social Ecology. He has worked and studied across the Pacific Rim in California, Costa Rica, Brazil, New Zealand, Tahiti, and the Marquesas, among other places. Much of his applied training through mentorship has focused on the installation of cultural values into management systems, often through the development of multiple bottom line assessment tools.

Projects: Dr. Lincoln has and continues to research a broad spectrum of areas, including forest ecology and management, restoration ecology, archaeology, personal values and sense of place, and terrestrial biogeochemistry within both natural and human dominated systems (i.e. agriculture). His primary focus, however, is on indigenous cropping systems and their interaction with human societies in both the past and the present. Using development pathways on islands as model systems for understanding the complex interaction between humans and their environment, Noa builds upon the important work of the human biocomplexity project (see Kirch 2010 for a good summary). By working with modern day restoration efforts Noa also seeks to define the role that these systems have today, including their impacts on culture, education, environment, and food.

Center for Pacific Island Studies
mawyer [at] hawaii [dot] edu

Bio: Alex earned a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago, for which he conducted fieldwork with the Mangarevan community in the Gambier and Society Islands of French Polynesia, focused on language at the intersection of history and politics. Some of his active research interests include the language of “nature” in Eastern Polynesia, issues of place and space in Pacific homelands, issues of language shift and revitalization, and legacies of the nuclear experience in French Polynesia.

Projects: In summer 2015, commencing a summer “pilot” project on the domestic transmission of language-encoded LEK situated in house gardens in Weno, Chuuk State, FSM. Alex has an ongoing project on rivers and springs in French Polynesia, and on the cultural cognition of language and space.

Department of Ethnic Studies
davianna [at] hawaii [dot] edu

Bio: Professor McGregor is founding member of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, is a historian of Hawai’i and the Pacific. Her PhD in Hawaiian and Pacific History was completed at the University of HawaiʻI, Mānoa in 1989. Her ongoing research endeavors document the persistence of traditional Hawaiian cultural customs, beliefs, and practices in rural Hawaiian communities, including the island of Moloka’i; the districts of Puna and Ka’u on Hawai’i; Ke’anae-Wailuanui on Maui and Waiahole-Waikane on O’ahu. This work is featured in her 2007 UH Press book, Kua’aina: Living Hawaiian Culture which won the Kenneth W. Balridge Prize for best book in any field of history written by a resident of Hawai’i from 2005-2007.

Projects: Pōmaikaʻi is conducting research on the original Native Hawaiians who lived in Kalaupapa, Kalawao, Makanalua and Waikolu before it was designated as a place to isolate HawaiʻI residents who contracted leprosy. She is part of a team working on the designation and implementation of the Moʻomomi Northwest Coast of Molokaʻi as Community-Based Subsistence Fishing Area (CBSFA). As a member of the Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana, she helps to steward the island of Kanaloa Kahoʻolawe. She helps to coordinate huakaʻi or cultural field trips for students, faculty and community members to engage in cultural and spiritual practices to heal the island and honor it as a sacred center for learning and mastery of Native Hawaiian cultural beliefs, customs and practices.

Department of Anthropology
padwe [at] hawaii [dot] edu

Bio: Jonathan Padwe is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai’i Mānoa. His research explores the production of nature and culture in borderlands and frontiers. He is currently at work on a book manuscript, tentatively titled Written on the Land: Violence and Social Formation on a Cambodian Frontier. The book tells the story of post-war land use change and “development” from the point of view of a small village near the Vietnam border in northeast Cambodia, and is based on years of ethnographic field research with the Jarai highland minority group. He previously conducted extensive field research with Aché foragers in eastern Paraguay.More…

Department of Botany
mbthomas [at] hawaii [dot] edu

Bio: Michael Thomas has degrees in Forest Management from Virginia Tech (BSc) and Plant Sciences from the University of Florida (PhD Botany, MS Horticulture). He arrived to the Pacific Islands as a Peace Corps volunteer (Kingdom of Tonga) in 1989. Serving for 4 years, he worked to identify and promote local tree crop varieties to strengthen the traditional Tongan agricultural system in the face of shifting monocultural crop production. He has worked and studied ethnomedical knowledge systems in Brazil, Jamaica, and more recently across the Pacific Rim in Hawaii, Tonga, Palau , Samoa, and Fiji. Much of his applied work has been in the developing world, he has worked on numerous agribusiness development projects in more than 20 countries focusing on ex-situ and in-situ plant conservation, indigenous crop management, value chain processing, and sustainable value-added agricultural production including non-timber forest products.More…