ANU Gender Institute Grant Awarded to PMB Executive Officer Kari James PMB Chair Nayahamui Rooney

Politics, gender, culture and history intersect in complex ways to shape lives across the Pacific. Across the Pacific, geopolitical tensions are leading to the intensification of militarisation and securitisation processes. History tells us that there is a close connection between militarisation and transformations in gender relations and impacts on women, including gender-based violence. At the same time, national political processes tend to be dominated by men while the gendered impacts of political processes tend to be ignored or obscured because women are excluded from decision making processes or are missing from the archives and historical records.

The ANU Gender Institute has awarded a grant to Kari James, Executive Officer of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau (PMB) and Dr Nayahamui Rooney, CHL Lecturer and recently appointed Chair of PMB to facilitate a Many Strands, One Basket dialogue to be held at the ANU in May 2024.

It is hoped that the Many Strands, One Basket dialogue will create an opportunity for conversations among people from diverse spaces (Many Strands) who may share an interest in the nexus between politics, gender, culture and history (One Basket).

The dialogue will build on Nayahamui and Kari’s respective works. Nayahamui’s research intersects the gendered dimensions of Australia’s offshore detention centre for asylum seekers hosted on Manus, Papua New Guinea, between 2012 and 2019 and the archiving of the papers of Manus and PNG female political leader, the late Nahau Rooney (her mother), one of the very few women elected to serve in PNG’s parliament since it attained independence in 1975.

Kari is the Executive Officer for Pacific Manuscripts Bureau (Pambu) at the ANU School of Culture, History & Language in the College of Asia and the Pacific. Kari’s work focuses on facilitating the work of the network of Pambu members while engaging extensively across a range of archival collections across the Pacific. Kari currently holds a GI grant to update the guide to women in the Pambu archive.

Those who wish to participate or contribute can obtain further information from Kari James (kari.james@anu.edu.au) and Nayahamui Rooney (michelle.rooney@anu.edu.au).