Tagimamao Melanie Bean is the recipient of an Evelyn Pruitt National Fellowship for Dissertation Research from the Society of Women Geographers

Tagimamao Melanie Bean is the recipient of an Evelyn Pruitt National Fellowship for Dissertation Research from the Society of Women Geographers.  This is a highly competitive award established by the same sponsor of our Pruitt Assistantships and Speakers series.

With these funds, Melanie will be completing the research and writing her dissertation entitled: “Navigating Tokelau Disaporic Imaginaries.”  She has completed a portion of the field work in New Zealand and will be working with the Tokelau community in Hawai’i and with archival materials there as well.  Her investigation will add vital detail to the limited research on Tokelau and its people.

She describes her dissertation as a response to renewed calls in Critical and Indigenous Geographies to unsettle nation-state boundaries born from colonialism and help achieve a better understanding of complex indigenous subjectivities in an increasingly globalized and mobile population.