Ana’s Manuscript Title – Melanesians on the Margins: the legacies of the labour trade for Melanesian descendants in Fiji and Sāmoa.
I am very grateful for the Pacific DevNet Research Write Up Grant. As a young mother to three children, I have not had much time devoted to my research and writing, which was especially difficult during the Covid Pandemic. Being selected for the Pacific Devnet Research Write Up award at such an early stage in my research career has been very rewarding because it has allowed me to join a new generation of Pacific Island researchers who were supervised by renowned Pacific scholars of excellent scholarship. My mentor provided me with timely advice and support, even going as far as guiding me on how to have my work published in prestigious international journals.
The article I was working on explores the phenomenon of labour trade migration, as well as the historical development of identity formation among minority Melanesian groups descended from Melanesian labourers who worked on colonial plantations in the Pacific islands during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article examines how they view their situation as a minority group in Fijian and Samoan societies, as well as how they have adapted to local settings and challenges.
This would not have been possible without DevNet’s invaluable scholarly advice, mentorship, and financial support. Vinaka vakalevu, Fa’afetai tele lava DevNet!
Ana
Ana’s Mentor:
Being privileged to meet Ana, even if only via Zoom and mainly by emails, I found this a very positive experience. She was, and is, a delightful mentee. She sent her article to me and I read and re-read it carefully and could see her lens was that of social science and the subject was the near-contemporary experience and views of people in two separate Pacific countries.
My work was thus mainly structural and asking questions that appeared to be pivotal to the flow of the narrative and analysis. She considered all suggestions and explained ‘gaps’ and thus in a sense she herself provided the needed connections and missing detail. Sometimes it was just a matter of re-arranging the order of things and shifting emphasis. I felt that to load her with too many amendments in one go would be disheartening to a young scholar, so I tried to do this in steps. In this way, back and forth, with the draft it became, I hope, a more coherent and clearer draft. Her communications were excellent in terms of time of responding. She was diligent and worked hard as well as while coping with employment demands and those of her family. I wish her well.
Judy
