Oceania Newsletter / Nieuwsbrief
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/113241
Centre for Pacific and Asian Studies, Radboud University, Netherlands
This webpage contains the archive of the Centre for Pacific and Asian Studies at Radboud University in the Netherlands. Originally, this Centre was set up in 1985 after the Netherlands government had announced its first austerity programme in higher education. As a consequence, anthropology departments were required to specialize and focus on one or two regions and one or two thematic subfields (e.g. political anthropology). The department of anthropology at Nijmegen decided to specialize in economic anthropology as well as in the region of Oceania since some staff members had already conducted research in ‘West New Guinea’ (now West Papua) as well as in Aboriginal Australia. In the 1990s, the Centre for Pacific Studies was flourishing. It managed to recruit a range of early career scholars who set up many interesting projects and launched numerous international initiatives to expand their field. They were also successful in applying for funds for PhD and postdoctoral projects. In 1992, the Centre organised the first European Colloquium on Pacific Studies, at which the European Society for Oceanists (ESfO; see http://esfo-org.eu) was set up. This international organisation is still active and convened its 14th international conference in Lucerne, Switzerland, in June 2025. During the first decade of the new millennium, however, changes in research funding policies made it increasingly difficult to apply for funding for research in Oceania. As a corollary, the number of new PhD projects in Oceania declined, which over the years was also reflected in the composition of staff at Nijmegen. Unfortunately, this was also a national trend. The last meeting of the Netherlands Association for Oceanic Studies, formerly a thriving network of scholars and professionals, took place in 2015. After 35 years, the Centre for Pacific and Asian Studies at Radboud University also lost institutional support.
Oceania Newsletter
From the start, the Centre for Pacific and Asian Studies published a newsletter containing an overview of recent publications. This was professionalized with the appointment of a documentalist, René van der Haar, in 1994. René worked meticulously to compile quarterly overviews of publications about Pacific studies. Although the emphasis may have been on anthropological publications, he included several related fields of study, especially archaeology, history, and linguistics. Over the years, it became easier to include more journals and (e-)books with the development of internet and the digitization of academic publications. As a result, the overviews of new publications in the quarterly Oceania Newsletter became relatively comprehensive. These overviews, along with the entire contents of the Oceania Newsletter are now full-text searchable on this site. René van de Haar and the former staff of the Centre for Pacific and Asian Studies are eternally grateful to the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa for salvaging this archive and making it available in the public domain.
—Toon van Meijl (former Director, Centre for Pacific Studies, Radboud University)
Searching the Newsletter
Each issue of the newsletter is available below, and all are full-text searchable at this link. The newsletter can also be searched alongside the entire contents of this digital repository by using the search box at the upper right-hand corner of this page. Note: Once a search is run, you will need to download individual issues from the results, open them and then run an additional search within the document (ctrf+f on PC or Command+F on Macintosh) to see where the search term appears in the text.
This webpage contains the archive of the Centre for Pacific and Asian Studies at Radboud University in the Netherlands. Originally, this Centre was set up in 1985 after the Netherlands government had announced its first austerity programme in higher education. As a consequence, anthropology departments were required to specialize and focus on one or two regions and one or two thematic subfields (e.g. political anthropology). The department of anthropology at Nijmegen decided to specialize in economic anthropology as well as in the region of Oceania since some staff members had already conducted research in ‘West New Guinea’ (now West Papua) as well as in Aboriginal Australia. In the 1990s, the Centre for Pacific Studies was flourishing. It managed to recruit a range of early career scholars who set up many interesting projects and launched numerous international initiatives to expand their field. They were also successful in applying for funds for PhD and postdoctoral projects. In 1992, the Centre organised the first European Colloquium on Pacific Studies, at which the European Society for Oceanists (ESfO; see http://esfo-org.eu) was set up. This international organisation is still active and convened its 14th international conference in Lucerne, Switzerland, in June 2025. During the first decade of the new millennium, however, changes in research funding policies made it increasingly difficult to apply for funding for research in Oceania. As a corollary, the number of new PhD projects in Oceania declined, which over the years was also reflected in the composition of staff at Nijmegen. Unfortunately, this was also a national trend. The last meeting of the Netherlands Association for Oceanic Studies, formerly a thriving network of scholars and professionals, took place in 2015. After 35 years, the Centre for Pacific and Asian Studies at Radboud University also lost institutional support.
Oceania Newsletter
From the start, the Centre for Pacific and Asian Studies published a newsletter containing an overview of recent publications. This was professionalized with the appointment of a documentalist, René van der Haar, in 1994. René worked meticulously to compile quarterly overviews of publications about Pacific studies. Although the emphasis may have been on anthropological publications, he included several related fields of study, especially archaeology, history, and linguistics. Over the years, it became easier to include more journals and (e-)books with the development of internet and the digitization of academic publications. As a result, the overviews of new publications in the quarterly Oceania Newsletter became relatively comprehensive. These overviews, along with the entire contents of the Oceania Newsletter are now full-text searchable on this site. René van de Haar and the former staff of the Centre for Pacific and Asian Studies are eternally grateful to the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa for salvaging this archive and making it available in the public domain.
—Toon van Meijl (former Director, Centre for Pacific Studies, Radboud University)
Searching the Newsletter
Each issue of the newsletter is available below, and all are full-text searchable at this link. The newsletter can also be searched alongside the entire contents of this digital repository by using the search box at the upper right-hand corner of this page. Note: Once a search is run, you will need to download individual issues from the results, open them and then run an additional search within the document (ctrf+f on PC or Command+F on Macintosh) to see where the search term appears in the text.