Alice Te Punga Somerville

Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Āti Awa) is a scholar, poet, and irredentist. She researches and teaches Māori, Pacific, and Indigenous texts in order to center Indigenous expansiveness and de-center colonialism. Te Punga Somerville currently is professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia. Prior to joining UBC in 2021, she taught Māori and Indigenous studies at the University of Waikato and has held academic positions in Australia, Hawai‘i, and elsewhere in New Zealand. Her first book, Once Were Pacific: Māori Connections to Oceania (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), won Best First Book from the Native American & Indigenous Studies Association. Her thought-provoking second book is Two Hundred and Fifty Ways to Start an Essay about Captain Cook (Bridget Williams Books, 2020).