Please note that this is a hybrid event and will be recorded
Title: Tracking the Tombuk Eruption of Kuwae, Vanuatu: Transdisciplinary approaches and results
Abstract
One of the hallmarks of genuinely transdisciplinary research is the requirement that projects be conceived from the outset through a collaborative process. The Kuwae Project brings together researchers in geology, archaeology, linguistics and history, working closely with communities and their leaders in the Shepherd Islands of central Vanuatu. The project addresses a key problem in global volcanology, which is the source of a major eruption during the 1450s CE, one of only three eruptions of comparable scale during the past millennium. Although this missing eruption has been associated since the 1990s with an eruption of the Kuwae volcano, in the Shepherd Islands, this link has been widely challenged more recently. Kuwae has also been approached through its signatures in the archaeological record, its imprint on the modern distribution of languages, and its central importance in local oral traditions. In this seminar we report on our experience of the first two years of this experiment in transdisciplinary collaboration, and on some preliminary results that demonstrate the efficacy of our approach.
Presenters
Chris Ballard is Associate Professor in Pacific History at the ANU School of Culture, History & Language, and his research interests revolve around Indigenous Melanesian historicities – their transformation through cross-cultural encounters; their representation through various media; and their articulation with contemporary challenges.
Stuart Bedford is Associate Professor in Archaeology at the ANU School of Culture, History & Language and an associate with the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Stuart’s research has covered the full span of human settlement in Vanuatu from initial Lapita settlement to the historic period, charting drivers of transformation over three millennia, which have resulted in the extraordinary linguistic and cultural diversity of the island nation.
Sönke Stern is a PhD student at the University of Auckland whose research focuses on the impacts of volcanic eruptions on the climate.
Shane Cronin is Professor of Volcanology at the University of Auckland. His research interests include volcano-tectonic interactions and instability, understanding Auckland's volcanic past and future risk, large-scale explosive volcanism at New Zealand andesite volcanoes, Taranaki, Tongariro and Ruapehu, volcanoes of the South Pacific (Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Fiji), as well as other volcanoes further afield in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Korea.
Sandrine Bessis is a PhD student at Lattice in Paris, France. She has done field research in Central Vanuatu for the past 5 years and she is currently writing her thesis on Namakura oral histories.
Alice Kaloran is President of the Tongoa and Shepherd Islands Women’s Association in central Vanuatu, and an integral member and co-leader of the Kuwae Project. She has been a leading advocate of women's rights and empowerment, and social justice issues more broadly in Vanuatu, participating in national, regional and global institutions and forum.