Gender and sexuality in the Pacific and Asia; ethnography of the Pacific, especially Vanuatu; anthropology and colonial history; politics of tradition; indigeneity, diaspora and citizenship; feminist theory; photography and cinema; museums and material culture in Oceania; gender and climate change.

Margaret Jolly was an ARC Laureate Fellow 2010-2016 and is a Professor in the School of Culture, History and Language in the College of Asia and the Pacific and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia since 1999. She is a transdisciplinary scholar of gender and Pacific studies who has written extensively on gender in Oceania, on exploratory voyages and travel writing, missions and contemporary Christianity, maternity and sexuality, cinema and art. She is currently focused on gender and climate change in Oceania.

Career highlights

Head Gender Relations Project/Centre 1992-2009; Burns Distinguished Visiting Chair, History, University of Hawai'i at Manoa (1998); Promotion to Professor, Election to Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (1999); Visiting Professor, University of California at Santa Cruz (2002); Visiting Professor, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique and École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France January-July 2009. ARC Laureate Fellow, 2010-2016. Appointed Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in January 2020 for services to education on gender and Pacific Studies.

Timothy Leach (ANU, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific) Primary Supervisor and Chair

Human Rights Movements in PNG: people with HIV, men with diverse sexualities and transgender Papua New Guineans

Mitiana Arbon (ANU, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific) Primary Supervisor and Chair

Oceanic Art and Value: the Case of Auction Houses

Talei Luscia Mangioni (ANU, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific) Asociate Supervisor

NucleaRising! An Historical Ethnography of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement

Chay Brown  (ANU, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research -CAEPR) Associate Supervisor

Domestic, family and sexual violence in the Northern Territory

Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner (ANU, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific) Primary Supervisor and Chair

Climate Change and Nuclear Devastation in the Marshall islands 

Ton Otto (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Co-supervisor
The Politics of Tradition in Baluan Social Change and the Construction of the Past in a Manus Society  (awarded 1991, Professor, James Cook University, Cairns)

Anna Paini (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Co-supervisor
Boundaries of Difference: Geographical and Social Mobility by Lifuan Women  (awarded 1993, Professor, University of Verona, Italy)

Richard Eves (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Supervisor, from late 1993
Seating the Place: Magic and Embodiment on the Lelet Plateau, New Ireland
(Papua New Guinea)  (awarded 1994, Senior Fellow, Department of Pacific Affairs, ANU)

Lisa Law (ANU, Human Geography, RSPAS, PhD) Co-supervisor
Dancing in Cebu: Mapping Bodies, Subjectivities and Spaces in an Era of HIV/AIDS 
(awarded 1996, Senior Lecturer, Geography, James Cook University Cairns)

Victoria Lukere (ANU, Pacific History, RSPAS, PhD) Co-supervisor
Mothers of the Taukei: Fijian Women and ‘The Decrease of the Race’  (awarded 1997, Executive Editor, Journal of Pacific History)

Berenice Carrington (ANU, Women’s Studies, The Faculties, PhD) Advisor
(Supervisor, August 1994–February 1995)
Pekina: An Ethnography of Memory  (awarded 1997, Artist, Teacher and Community Consultant, Sydney)

Hiro Miyazaki (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Advisor
Artefacts of Truth  (awarded 1997, Professor, Northwestern University)

Kathryn Sweet (ANU, Asian Studies, RSPAS, MA) Co-supervisor
Reinserting ‘Maem’, a Fragment of Thai History: White Women in Siam, 1860-1920 
(awarded 1996, Public servant in Department of Immigration and Indigenous Affairs, Canberra) 

Roberta James (ANU, Anthropology, The Faculties, MA) Supervisor and Chair
Spiralling Lives:  Women’s Experience and the Physics of Resistance among Witches of the Waikato  (awarded 1997, Consultant, Canberra)

Frances Reardon Finney (ANU, Anthropology, The Faculties, MA) Supervisor and Chair
‘I Thought it would be Heaven’: Migration, Gender, and Community amongst Overseas Tongans  (awarded 1999, Senior Officer in Department of Immigration and Indigenous Affairs, Canberra)

Susanne Kuehling (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Advisor
The Name of the Gift: Ethics of Exchange on Dobu Island  (awarded 1998, Lecturer, Canada)

Julia Byford (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Supervisor and Chair
Dealing with Death, Beginning with Birth: Women’s Health and Childbirth on Misima Island, Papua New Guinea  (awarded 1999, Independent consultant on gender in the Pacific)

Sarah Dunlop (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Advisor
Conquest and Change: Mongol Herding in Xilingol, Inner Mongolia  (awarded 2000, Senior Researcher, Central Land Council, Alice Springs)

Elizabeth Branigan (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Co-supervisor When Four Braids Come Together: Gender, Identity, Activism and Inequality in Vallur Village, Andhra Pradesh, India  (awarded 2002, Lecturer, Victoria University of Technology, Melbourne)

Kristina Jamieson (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Supervisor and Chair
In the Isle of the Beholder: Traversing Place, Exploring Representations and
Experiences of Cook Islands Tourism  (awarded 2002, Public Servant, Senior Officer in Department of Labour, Welllington., New Zealand) 

Gregory Rawlings (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Supervisor and Chair
‘Once there was a Garden, now there is a Swimming Pool’: Inequality, Labour and
Land in Pango, a Peri-Urban Village in Vanuatu  (awarded 2002, Senior Lecturer, Anthropology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand)

Katerina Teaiwa (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Supervisor and Chair
Visualizing te Kainga, Dancing te Kainga: History and Culture between Rabi,
Banaba and Beyond  (awarded 2002, Associate Professor, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU

Tim Curtis (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Supervisor and Chair
Talking about Place: Identities, Histories and Powers among the Na’hai Speakers
of Malakula (Vanuatu)  (awarded 2002, Director - Intangible Heritage UNESCO, Paris)

Michael Morgan (ANU, History, RSPAS, PhD) Co-supervisor
Politik is Poison: The Politics of Memory among the Churches of Christ in Northern Vanuatu  (awarded 2003, Consultant, Canberra

John Patrick Taylor (ANU, Anthropology, Faculty of Arts, PhD) Supervisor and Chair Ways of the Place: History, Cosmology and Material Culture in North Pentecost, Vanuatu (awarded 2003, Senior Lecturer, Anthropology, La Trobe University)

Ines Rittgasser [Yeshe Choekyi Lhamo] (ANU, Gender Relations Centre, PhD) Supervisor and Chair. Inventing the Buddha: The Glorification of Ascetic Masculinity in Taiwanese Buddhism (awarded 2004, Buddhist nun, Tibet)

Sabine Hess (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Supervisor and Chair Person and Place on  Vanua Lava, Vanuatu (awarded 2006, Social Professional 3A Composites Papua New Guinea)

Nicole George (ANU, International Relations, RSPAS, PhD) Co-supervisor Situating Agency: Gender Politics and Circumstance in Fiji (awarded 2006, Associate Professor in International Relations, University of Queensland)

Larissa Sandy (ANU, Gender Relations Centre, PhD) Supervisor and Chair ”My Blood. Sweat and Tears”: Female Sex Workers in Cambodia – Victims, Vectors or Agents? (awarded July 2007, Senior Lecturer, RMIT)

Ruth Saovana-Spriggs (ANU, Political and Social Change, RSPAS, PhD) Advisor/2008 Supervisor) Gender and Peace: Bougainvillean Women, Matriliny and the Peace Process (awarded December 2007, Researcher and community development, Bougainville)

Sina Emde (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Supervisor and Chair Gender, Race and Nation in Fiji: After the Coups (awarded July 2008, Lecturer, University of Heidelberg)

Markus Friedrich Pangerl (ANU, Gender Relations Centre, PhD) Supervisor and Chair Moving Lives - Routes and Routines of Contemporary Indo-Fijian Migration.(awarded July 2008, Senior Officer in German import-export company, Frankfurt)

Katherine Lepani (ANU, Gender Relations Centre, RSPAS, PhD) Supervisor and Chair “In the process of knowing”: Making Sense of HIV and AIDS in the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea. (awarded July 2008, Senior Research associate, ARC Laureate project Engendering Persons, Transforming Things: Christianities, Commodities, and Individualism in Oceania, ANU; Consultant Port Moresby Papua New Guinea)

Ana Dragojlovic (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Supervisor and Chair Beyond Bali: Extending Postcolonial Visions of Intimacy and Performance in the Contemporary Netherlands (awarded July 2008, Senior Lecturer, Gender Studies, University of Melbourne)

Frances Steel (ANU, Gender Relations Centre, RSPAS, PhD) Supervisor and Chair  Oceania Under Steam: Maritime Cultures, Colonial Histories, 1870s-1910s (awarded July 2008, Discovery Early Career Research Award, Assocate Professor, University of Wollongong)

Gregory Dvorak (ANU, Gender Relations Centre, RSPAS/Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, PhD) Supervisor and Chair Seeds from Afar, Fruit from the Reef: Imagining Home between the Coral and Concrete of Kwajalein (awarded July 2008, Professor Gender and Sexualiity Studies, Waseda University, Japan

Nathan Boyle (ANU, Gender Relations Centre, RSPAS, PhD) Supervisor and Chair Accounting for Human Rights: Audit Cultures and Professionalism in Forum- Asia (awarded July 2009, Public Servant, Consultant, Canberra)

Regina Knapp (ANU, Anthropology, RSPAS, PhD) Advisor Syncretism among the Unggai-Bena, Papua New Guinea Highlands (Awarded 2010, Researcher and filmmaker, Berlin.)

Christine Stewart (ANU, SCHL, College of Asia and the Pacific, PhD) Supervisor and Chair Pamuk na Poofta: Criminalizing Consensual Sex in Papua New Guinea (Awarded 2012, Legislaton drafter PNG; Died 2018).

Jin-shiu [Jessie] Sung (ANU, SCHL, College of Asia and the Pacific, PhD) Supervisor and Chair Engendering Knowledge: Han Taiwanese Pregnancy Cultures in Rural Taiwan (Awarded 2012, Senior Researcher, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, Died 2018)

Rebecca Monson (ANU, College of Law) Advisor Hu nao save tok? Women, men and land: negotiating property and authority in Solomon Islands (Awarded 2012, Associate Professor, College of Law, ANU.)

Marata Tamaira (Vice-Chancellor's Scholarship, ARC Laureate Project Engendering Persons, Transforming Things: Christianities, Commodities and Individualism in Oceania, ANU, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific) Supervisor and Chair Visual Sovereignty and Indigenous Countervisuality: Picturing Contemporary Kanaka Maoli Art Practice in Hawai'i. (Awarded July 2015. Lecturer and Research Associate, University of Hawai'i at Hilo)

Latu Latai (ARC Laureate Project Engendering Persons, Transforming Things: Christianities, Commodities and Individualism in Oceania, ANU, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific) Supervisor and Chair Covenant Keepers:  A History of Samoan (LMS) Missionary Wives in the Western Pacific, 1839-1979 (Awarded December 2016 Lecturer, Malua Theological College)

Kimberley Doyle (ANU, College of Arts and Social Sciences) Advisor Chasing Rainbows? Australian Peacekeepers in the Pacific 1997-2006. (Awarded 2016)

Siobahn McDonnell (ANU, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific) Co-supervisorMy land, my life:  Property, power and identity in land transformaton in Vanuatu. (Awarded July 2016, Gender Institute Prize, Australian Anthropological Society Prize 2017, for best PHD thesis). Lecturer, Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU 

Annie McCarthy (ANU, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific) Advisor Children’s Stories of Danger, Intervention and Hope in Delhi’s Slums. Lecturer in Development Studies, University of Canberra

Salmah Eva-Lina Lawrence (ARC Laureate Project Engendering Persons, Transforming Things: Christianities, Commodities and Individualism in Oceania, ANU, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific)  Supervisor and Chair Speaking for Ourselves: Kwato Perspectives on Matriliny and Missionisation Awarded 2018, Gender Institute Prize for Best PhD thesis, Consultant, Sydney

Areti Metuamate (ARC Laureate Project Engendering Persons, Transforming Things: Christianities, Commodities and Individualism in OceaniaANU, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific) Primary Supervisor and Chair Kingship and Kinship in Tonga Awarded 2019, Dean St Marks College, Adelaide. CEO of Te Kupenga, Catholic Leadership Institute, Wellington 2020.

Karen Tu (ANU, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific) Co–Supervisor Wa and Tatala: The Transformation of Indigenous Canoes on Yap and Orchid Island  Awarded 2018, University Lecturer, College of Micronesia - FSM, Pohnpei

Paul Mitchell (ANU, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific), Co–supervisor Nemasien: Mbwotegot Cosmology in Transition Consultant Melbourne

Jade Aikman-Dodds (ANU, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific), Co–supervisor Terra in Our Mist: A Tuhoe Narrative of Indigenous Sovereignty and State Violence Awarded, Working on racism in NZ education, Wellington 

Recent Honours Students

Miranda Scarr (ANU, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific)

Gender and Climate Change in Oceania, awarded First Class Honours, 2015

Mitiana Arbon (ANU, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific)

Oceania Unbound: Pacific Art and the National Gallery of Australia, awarded First Class Honours, 2017.