Pala Molisa is a Ni-Vanuatu academic who has recently finished teaching at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Accounting and Commercial Law. His PhD looked at the role that accounting practices play in helping to exacerbate and perpetuate many of the major social and ecological crises we collectively face today.
His people come from Vanlav and Ambae. His parents were part of the core group of leaders and organizers that helped to take Vanuatu to from independence from the British and French. And he was part of that first generation of youth sent over, after independence, to pursue schooling in New Zealand, where he went to Nelson College, and after that, Victoria University of Wellington, where he studied Law and Accounting.
His research focusses primarily on issues of social justice, and he was written on issues such neo-colonialism in the Pacific, neoliberalism, male violence against women, the harms of the prostitution and pornography industries, the genocide in West Papua, and catastrophic climate disruption.
He writes poetry, op-eds, and academic articles, and his current project is a book on the Pacific history of pan-Pacific decolonization and independence struggles.
Those histories of pan-Pacific decolonization and independence struggle are really crucial for understanding the social, political, and ecological challenges that confront the Pacific region and, more broadly, the world today. But they have also been by and large ignored and forgotten, particularly, in the mainstream centres of education and learning. His current project involves the recovery and re-examination of that history.