Pacific History Association
PHA 2027
30 November - 2 December
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Papua New Guinea
Waigani Campus, Port Moresby
Conference Theme: Confronting Legacies
Papua New Guinea, the country hosting this conference, has celebrated in 2025 its fiftieth year of Independence. This occasion sparked reflections on the country’s past, showing how much the present and future is largely shaped by historical legacies, be they ancestors’ oral traditions and/or the colonial past. Indeed, as Karl Marx wrote, people ‘make their own history […], but they do not make it just as they please […] but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.’ (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte). It is with this framework in mind that we invite Pacific scholars to reflect on the theme of ‘confronting legacies’, and the power dynamics these legacies entail. How do the legacies of the past shaping our present affect and inform the kinds of histories we write, as well as the oral narratives we co-construct with our interlocutors? Are these legacies constraints we need to break free from in order to write other kinds of histories, or do we need to fully reckon with them to be able to imagine different futures? Is ‘Pacific History’, as a field, one of the legacies we have to confront?
Call for Panels
(Closes on December 18th, 2026)
The Call for Panels for the 2027 PHA Conference is now open!
Prospective panel conveners are invited to submit a panel title and an abstract no longer than 300 words by December 18th, 2026 using the following form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeOV5Yj2J8zR0JgeV_EsrxqAvj3CQNxB5uJmu-4DNrEzG5ZKQ/viewform?usp=dialog
Conveners who are reasonably certain of prospective participants to their proposed panels have the option of listing them (this is not binding, but it will be helpful to the organisers).
At the closure of the Call for Panels, the UPNG Committee in Port Moresby will make a decision on the submissions received. A list of panels will be published on this website in early January. After a short period since the publication of the list, a Call for Abstracts will follow. Once the Call for Abstracts is closed, panel conveners will be responsible for finalizing – in concert with the UPNG Committee – the list of participants to their panel(s).
In the spirit of including as many perspectives and voices as possible, a special ‘Miscellaneous’ panel will be made available to gather those papers that have not found a ‘home’ in any of the panels accepted. The UPNG Committee will be responsible to vet the submissions for the ‘Miscellaneous’ panel and ultimately making a decision whether to accept or not proposed papers.
For any query, please contact us at pha2027upng@gmail.com