Associate Professor Alice A Te Punga Somerville
Associate Professor / Manukura
Qualifications: PhD (Cornell), MA (Auck)
Personal Website: http://oncewerepacific.blogspot.co.nz/
Iwi: Te Ātiawa, Taranaki
About Alice
At its heart, Alice's research is about texts by Māori, Pacific and Indigenous people. Dr Te Punga Somerville's work is underpinned by her belief that we (Māori, Pacific and/ or Indigenous peoples) are constrained when the stories about us are limited. She therefore focus on texts as evidence, sites and foundations of stories that are far more complex than those that are told about us by other people or even those that are generally told by ourselves.
Dr Te Punga Somerville's MA and PhD focused on Māori written literatures, and as she deliberately sought broader contexts for exploring this writing she developed a twin interest and expertise in Indigenous studies and Pacific studies. She also writes the occasional poem.
Papers Taught
Research Interests
Māori, Pacific and Indigenous literary and cultural studies. Pacific studies. Indigenous studies.
Recent Publications
Te Punga Somerville, A. (2021). OMG settler colonial studies: response to Lorenzo Veracini: ‘Is Settler Colonial Studies Even Useful?’. Postcolonial Studies, 24(2), 278-282. doi:10.1080/13688790.2020.1854980
Te Punga Somerville, A. (2020). Two Hundred and Fifty Ways to Start an Essay about Captain Cook. Bridget Williams Books.
Te Punga Somerville, A. (2019). ‘[Modernism] in Māori life’: Te Ao Hou. In M. Long, & M. Hayward (Eds.), New Oceania. Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific. Routledge.
Te Punga Somerville, A. (2019). Two hundred and fifty ways to start an essay about Captain Cook. New Zealand Journal of History, 53(1), 3-49.
Find more research publications by Alice Te Punga Somerville
Keywords
English; Indigenous Rights; Maori; Maori History; Maori Identity; Maori Research; Pacific Issues
Indigenous studies, Pacific literary and cultural studies, Comparative Indigenous studies, Indigenous (esp Māori) diasporas