With editorial offices at the Center for Pacific Islands Studies, The Contemporary Pacific covers a wide range of disciplines with the aim of providing comprehensive coverage of contemporary developments in the entire Pacific Islands region and the global Pacific diaspora. It features refereed, readable articles that examine social, economic, political, ecological, literary, and cultural topics, along with political reviews, book and media reviews, resource reviews, and a dialogue section with interviews and short essays. Each issue highlights the work of one or more Pacific Islander artists.
Seeking Peace in Religious Teachings: Women’s Responses to Domestic Violence in Rural Vanuatu, by Donna Jella Tagaro and Naohiro Nakamura
DIALOGUE: Pacific Studies: Engaging Law and Anthropology
Pacific Studies: Engaging Law, Anthropology, Archives, and the Arts, Katerina Teaiwa, Terence Wesley-Smith, and Talei Luscia Mangioni
Pacific Studies and Anthropology: Articulations and Disarticulations, April K Henderson
Unsettling Legal Imperialism and Cultivating Homegrown Law: Why Law Schools Need Pacific Studies, Rebecca Monson, Dylan Asafo, Joseph D Foukona, and Bridget Fa‘amatuainu
RESOURCES: Pacific Studies: Engaging Archives and the Arts
Citing Ourselves, Talei Luscia Mangioni and Lisa Hilli
Resources Editor’s Note: Re-Viewing Archives, Stuart Dawrs
OCEANIA IN REVIEW
Micronesia in Review: Issues and Events, 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024, Zaldy Dandan
Polynesia in Review: Issues and Events, 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024, Margaret Mutu and Christina Newport
BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEWS
Power and Influence in the Pacific Islands: Understanding Statecraftiness, edited by Joanne Wallis, Henrietta McNeill, Michael Rose, and Alan Tidwell Reviewed by Theò Bajon
Ol Sing Blong Plantesen: South Sea Island Spirituals from the Queensland Canefields and Beyond, by Michael Webb Reviewed by Sebastian T Ellerich
The Chinese in Papua New Guinea: Past, Present and Future, by Anna Hayes, Rosita Henry, and Michael Wood Reviewed by David Lipset
Connecting the Kingdom: Sailing Vessels in the Early Hawaiian Monarchy, 1790–1840, by Peter R Mills Reviewed by Hans K Van Tilburg
CONTRIBUTORS
TCP News
Professor Brij V. Lal Award
The Contemporary Pacific is pleased to announce the winner of this year’s Professor Brij V. Lal Award, “Seeking Peace in Religious Teachings: Women’s Responses to Domestic Violence in Rural Vanuatu,” by Donna Jella Tagaro and Naohiro Nakamura, published in the journal’s spring 2025 issue (37:1).
The award honors Professor Brij Vilash Lal, an eminent Pacific historian and writer and the founding editor of The Contemporary Pacific, who passed away on 25 December 2021. Professor Lal, or Brij as he was fondly known among friends, was a trailblazing scholar who authored numerous books and articles that helped shape the field of Pacific history. His work focused largely on Fiji’s history and politics and on Indo-Fijian/Girmit history and the Indian diaspora. Later in his life, he also published short stories that reflected on his life and journeys.
Consistent with the journal’s broad-ranging focus, and with Professor Lal’s own research and writings, the winning article or paper may come from any discipline, including creative writing, that highlights the very best of critical thinking and scholarship within Pacific studies.
The review committee noted that this year’s winning article is “an important piece of scholarship that engages with an issue that is both contemporary and critical” and is “especially well positioned in relation to the award criteria that relate to the lived experience of Pacific Islanders and to themes reflecting an emphasis on democracy, law and order, and human rights.” The judges commend the authors for “bringing a deeper understanding of domestic violence’s prevalence through the use of personal interviews conducted in a rural village.”
Donna Jella is a senior geography and ICT teacher at Central School in Port Vila, Vanuatu. She received a degree in geography and information systems and a master’s degree in geography from the University of the South Pacific. Her interest is in gender issues in the context of rural Pacific Island countries, specifically Vanuatu. Naohiro Nakamura (PhD in human geography) is a senior lecturer in geography at the University of the South Pacific, Laucala campus, Fiji. His research interests include Indigenous cultural representation, climate-change impacts, disaster response, and gender in the context of Pacific Island countries.
On behalf of the authors, Donna shared that the award is an honor: “It’s not only recognition of our research, but a tribute to strong, resilient ni-Vanuatu rural women who have survived domestic violence—inflicted by people and within places they once believed were safe. Its significance is even greater given this critical moment, not just for abused ni-Vanuatu women, but for women across the wider Pacific community.”
The Lal family congratulated the authors on their important work and are moved by the article’s focus on women’s experiences, a topic Brij also wrote about in the context of Girmitya women in Fiji. The family found the piece to be “unflinching, compassionate, and written with deep care—exemplifying the award’s purpose.”
Similarly, the editor of The Contemporary Pacific, Professor Katerina Teaiwa, shared her support for the committee’s decision and expressed her warm congratulations to the authors, writing that “research spotlighting the voices and experiences of ni-Vanuatu women is critical for understanding and changing the toxic social, cultural, and ideological conditions that make this violence possible.”
To the Lal family, the “included quotes of the Malekula women’s experience of domestic violence are confronting, and the statistics are damning. But there is clear empathy and respect in the process of listening and the consideration with which possible pathways forward may be navigated. The courage of both the authors and the participants should be honoured in bringing this critical issue of contemporary Pacific life into the searing daylight in which it belongs. It is a privilege for the award to be able to recognise this outstanding scholarship and support its wider visibility.”
The Lal family has also established a prize to reflect Brij’s other body of work, on Indian indentureship, Girmit and Gimitiya, and its legacies.The Brij V. Lal Prize is offered for the best journal article published the year before on Indian indentureship, Girmit and Gimitiya, and its legacies. This prize is offered under the auspices of the Ameena Gafoor Institute in London(https://ameenagafoorinstitute.org/).
The 2026 Brij V. Lal Prize winner is: Ben Jacob. 2025. Planting in the Ruins: Climate, Indentureship and the Cultivation of Freedom in British Guiana and Mauritius. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 26 (2). https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/968702/pdf.
