"To Hell With Drowning" 2023

Due to great interest in the AAPS conference and space limitations at ANU, the organising committee has closed registrations early.  Speakers will be able to register through an alternate portal, please check your emails.

Conference details:

“We need stories. And not just stories about the stakes, which we know are high, but stories about the places we call home. Stories about our own small corners of the Earth as we know them. As we love them.” – Julian Aguon, To Hell With Drowning, 2021

The 2023 AAPS conference theme "To Hell With Drowning" emphasises the need to resist and reframe fatalist and narrow representations of Oceania. From the highlands to the islands, the conference aims to advance multiscopic understandings of Oceanic people’s relationships and relationality of places through storytelling rooted in a trans-disciplinary, critical and creative Pacific Studies. Endorsing Indigenous human rights lawyer and writer Julian Aguon’s call for “stories about the places we call home”, we seek stories and conversations that illuminate fierce attachments to place and the immense beauty, magic and abundance of Oceania.

The Pacific Studies community recognises both ancestral and contemporary kinships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, South Sea Islanders, Māori and Pacific Islanders. The 2023 conference will take place at the Australian National University, an institution that is located on the unceded lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people and central to the Australian coloniality that continues to impinge upon the sovereignties of First Nations of this Country and beyond in Oceania. It is also an institution central to the decolonial possibilities envisaged by Pacific Studies. This conference understands this place as a site for meaningful solidarities and approaches to Pacific Studies that are both place-based and multi-sited in scope.

The current draft of the AAPS 2023 Quick Timetable (as of 2 March 2023), is now available via our website: 
http://pacificstudies.org.au/w...

Ticket information: 

Early Bird tickets and prices for participation (for the full four days of the conference) are available until 11.55 pm on Friday 17 February 2023.

From Saturday 18 February 2023, Standard Registration tickets and prices for participation (for the full four days of the conference) will apply. 

If you want to be eligible for members' prices, please be sure to join AAPS via our website: http://pacificstudies.org.au/join/

Registration includes an evening reception on Tuesday evening and morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea from Wednesday-Friday.

Aside from this, don't forget to make sure you get a ticket to the conference dinner as well in your purchase! In the checkout questions, you will be able to list your dietary requirements, access needs and if you are a postgraduate/ECR if you would like to participate in the postgraduate/ECR workshop on Tuesday afternoon, 11 April 2023.

If you would like to participate in only one day of the conference, you can purchase one of the 'Daily flat rate' ticket. Please review our draft timetable and identify the day you would like to come to so we can provide catering for you on that day. 

Postgraduate/ECR workshop:

The postgraduate/ECR workshop will take place on Tuesday afternoon, 11 April 2023. We encourage postgraduates and ECRs to join us in the afternoon from 12pm for the workshop with lunch provided. Registrations are limited to 30 places and are essential. 

Program:

The Welcome to Country and the Epeli Hau’ofa public lecture will take place in the late afternoon on Tuesday 11 April 2023.

This will be followed by an evening reception for all registered participants of the conference.

Wednesday 12 April - Friday 14 April 2023 will consist of a series of keynote plenaries, as well as, three parallel streams of sessions across multiple sites on the Australian National University campus including the HC Coombs Building, the Hedley Bull Building, the Menzies Library, the Coombs Extension and other locations.

For a full list of announced speakers, sessions and convenors go to: http://pacificstudies.org.au/2...

Conference dinner:

The conference dinner begins at 5.30pm. Tickets include dinner, drinks and entertainment.

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This conference is organised and convened by Katerina Teaiwa, Talei Mangioni, Rebecca Monson and Lisa Hilli. It is supported by the Australian Association for Pacific Studies, the ANU School of Culture, History and Language, the Asia Pacific Innovation Program, College of Asia and the Pacific, the ANU College of Law, the Gender Institute and the Pacific Institute.

Please note that this conference is an in-person event. However, the Epeli Hau’ofa public lecture will be recorded and uploaded at a later date.