Alice Te Punga Somerville gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on March 8, 2023.
Alice Te Punga Somerville is a scholar, poet and irredentist who writes and teaches at the intersections of literary studies, Indigenous studies and Pacific studies.
Since 2022, she has been a full professor at the University of British Columbia in the Department of English language & literatures and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. Before arriving on Musqueam territory, Te Punga Somerville previously taught at universities in Australia, Hawai’i and New Zealand. Her undergraduate and masters education was at the University of Auckland and her PhD is from Cornell University.
Te Punga Somerville's publications include Once Were Pacific: Māori Connections to Oceania (2012), 250 Ways To Start an Essay about Captain Cook (2020) and a (forthcoming) book of poetry Always Italicise: how to write while colonised (2022). Her current research project, ‘Writing the new world: Indigenous texts 1900-1975,’ focusses on writing published in English and in Indigenous languages by Indigenous people from New Zealand, Australia, Hawai’i and Fiji.