Who We Are

PhD Students as of Fall 2024

Presley Keʻalaanuhea Ah Mook Sang - was raised in Papakōlea, Oʻahu and currently resides in Panaʻewa, Hilo, Hawaiʻi. She received a Bachelor’s degree in Hawaiian Studies and Hawaiian Language and a Master’s degree in Hawaiian from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her Master’s thesis entitled “Kuʻu Wahi Alelo, Leʻa Nō Ke Hoʻopā ʻIa” focused on utilizing ʻōlelo nane (riddles) for Hawaiian language acquisition and preservation which extends to her current work that concentrates on incorporating various aspects of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi into language learning curriculum. She is an aloha ʻāina advocate who has offered free instruction and learning materials to the community through endeavors such as the creation and implementation of Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu University at Mauna Kea, Hawaiʻi. Through her doctoral studies, she intends to focus her work on examining what indigenous places of learning entail.

Ryse Kahikuonalani Akiu

Donavan Kamakani Albano - is a Kanaka ʻŌiwi poet and future political educator from Mokauea, Kalihilihiolaumiha, Oʻahu. They received a BA in Ethnic Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and is now pursuing a PhD in Political Science specializing in Indigenous Politics with plans to also obtain a graduate certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Kamakani’s research interests include a political education movement in Hawaiʻi toward abolition feminisms for demilitarization. Through indigenous queer poetics, they are also interested in analyzing abolitionist futures and critiquing the U.S. empire through bridging international solidarities with the contemporary Hawaiian independence movement

Leilani Axelrode 

Samantha Marley Barnett - is a third-year PhD student in the Indigenous Politics program in the Political Science department. She is a native Chamoru from the island of Guåhan in the Marianas archipelago. Samantha is the project co-director of Tåhdong Marianas, a collective of Chamoru artists, activists, scholars, and filmmakers that is currently producing a media project documenting stories from musicians and cultural practitioners throughout the Mariana Islands. She is also a lead author in a project with the University of Guam Press to write elementary school textbooks from a culturally rooted Chamoru perspective. Samantha’s doctoral work engages with Chamoru liberation and relationality across the archipelago, challenges to US militarism, abolition, and legend as ancestral memory.

Tiffany Beam - is a child of the Mongolian, Chinese, and Taiwanese diasporas, born and raised in the ancestral home of the Muscogee Nation, otherwise known as Atlanta, Georgia. Tiffany is an artist-scholar with a BA from New York University and a background in contemporary art history, minoritarian aesthetics, and curatorial work. With Indigenous politics, their doctoral research engages museum studies, political theory, alternative futures, Asian American studies, and critical ocean studies. It seeks to interrogate settler colonial governance of oceans and waterways in the Pacific while centering subjugated and emergent relations to water, specifically Kanaka Maoli, Indigenous Taiwan, and Asian settler relations. This research currently involves questions on ordinary affects, sensory aesthetics, cultural politics of water, Indigenous seascape resurgences, and decolonial futures beyond nation-states. Tiffany is planning an exhibition to accompany her dissertation.

Sarah Julia Escobido Brandenstein

Erica Bout 

Ulamila Cagivanua

Sra Manpo Ciwidian - is a descendant of the Pangcah/Amis people from Taiwan. He is currently a doctoral student in the Indigenous Politics program in the Political Science Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. In addition, he is pursuing a Certificate Program in Pacific Islands Studies offered by the Center for Pacific Islands Studies. He holds an MA degree in Ethnology from National Chengchi University in Taiwan. His master's thesis was titled 'Austronesian Diplomacy: A Study of Austronesian Discourse in Taiwan and Its Practice,' which argued that Indigenous peoples of Taiwan not only play a significant role but also exert their own agency in Austronesian diplomacy. In his doctoral studies, his research interests have expanded to encompass Indigenous diplomacy, Pacific studies, settler colonialism, Indigenous resurgence, and Indigenous language revitalization.

Randizia Crisostomo - Håfa Adai! Na’an hu si Randizia Crisostomo. Sumåsaga yu’ giya Tacoma, Washington na siudåt, lao taotao Guåhan yu’ (Guam), ginen i sengsong Barrigada. Manestutudia yu’ Indigenous Politics giya University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Political Science department. I am a first-year Ph.D student, community advocate, supporter, learner, and educator–areas of my life that are very interconnected with one another. At this given moment in time, my current research interests are on Chamoru resurgence theories, futurisms, Pasifika feminisms, and celebrating grief through relationality. My M.A. thesis, “Inafa’maolek: Chamoru Resurgence through Ethics and Storytelling,” frames the ways in which Pacifika scholars use community-based participatory methods as an intervention towards deconstructing settler colonial narratives produced within institutional spaces, particularly among research facilities and cultural museums.

Ada Davis-Nouri

Aaron Donaldson

Whitney Poliʻahu Dulay

Shannon Pōmaika‘i Hennessey - Shannon Pōmaikaʻi Hennessey is a Kanaka Maoli scholar and writer from Niu Valley, Oʻahu. She holds a BA in history and American studies from the University of Notre Dame and an MA in Pacific Islands studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her MA thesis, “Hawaiian Enough: Insecure Identities, Racialization, and Recognition among Kānaka Maoli” examines feelings of cultural inadequacy among many Kānaka, and the ways we might recognize each other and ourselves as Hawaiian enough as a means of healing. As she pursues her PhD, she is interested in confronting class discrepancies in Hawaiʻi, highlighting Indigenous women, utilizing ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi sources and Indigenous Pacific methodologies, fostering Oceanic solidarities, and cultivating and recognizing Indigenous resurgence.

Heather Jacobs

Kahala Johnson - is a student in the Political Science doctorate program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Concentrating in Indigenous Politics, Futures Studies, and Political Theory, his academic work is concerned with native relational governances beyond the nation-state, capitalism, and juridical constructs. Currently, he is working on decolonizing image-nations through the genres of horror, fantasy, and speculative fiction as well as examining queer(ed) aesthetic performance as fecund grounds for anarcha-indigenous governmentality modules.

Kamalani Johnson - Kamalani Johnson is a generationally rooted son of Kahana, Oʻahu. He is an ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi and moʻolelo Hawaiʻi scholar pursuing a PhD in Political Science at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa specializing in Indigenous politics and political theory and a graduate certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. He holds BA degrees in Hawaiian Studies and Linguistics and an MA in Indigenous Language and Culture Education with a focus in Hawaiian Language and Literature. His MA thesis “ʻIkuā ka Leo o ka Hekili: He Noiʻina i nā Mele Malama o ke “Kaao Hooniua Puuwai no Ka-Miki”” analyzed weather chants as seen in J. W. H. I. Kihe’s “Kaao Hooniua Puuwai no Ka-Miki” literature which was published in Ka Hoku o Hawaii between 1914-1917. His Ph.D research examines how Kānaka Maoli writers of the early 20th century discursively resisted colonialism.

Kaiminaauao Kahikina - is a Kanaka Maoli PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. His research is dedicated to the practice of animating the present and knowing the future through Kanaka ʻŌiwi structures of thought within the ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) archives. Kahikina’s research analyzes the signs and symbols observed during political upheaval within historical-political formations in the Hawaiian archipelago. Through the intimate spaces of the ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi archives and the innumerous moʻolelo (stories/histories) present there, Kahikina’s work seeks to articulate a particular genealogy of power that links the ancestral, the living, and the descendant through a language of symbols imbued in concepts like wānana (prophecy), hōʻailona (signs), ʻōuli (portents), ʻāouli (portents/firmament), and kāhoaka (premonitions).

Kawaipuna Kalipi

Kekuhikuhipuuoneonaaliiokohala H. Kanahele

Kawenaulaokala Kapahua

Paige Kawakami 

Ciera ‘Ihilani Lasconia

Arianna Lunow-Luke

Ed Leon Guerrero 

Cheng-Cheng Li - holds an MA degree in International Studies and is pursuing a PhD in Political Science. Before arriving at UH Mānoa, Li worked as a filmmaker. He is conducting community-engaged scholarship for the filmmaking process. As a collaborative filmmaker, he offers a convening point for communities to come together with each other, with issue leaders, to build solutions. His research in the Indigenous Program will continue the investigation and preservation of Indigenous groups, the access to land rights, and cross-cultural understanding in the policy-making process. Area of interests: Indigenous Politics, Participatory Filmmaking, Public Policy

Kerry Kamakaokaʻilima Long

Dustin Skayu Louis

Maluhia Low

Zachary Alakaʻi Lum - a kupa of Haʻikū, Koʻolaupoko, Oʻahu, is a lifetime student and practitioner of mele, or Hawaiian song. As a graduate of Kamehameha Schools Kapālama and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, earning concurrent bachelor’s degrees in music and ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, and a master’s degree in ethnomusicology, Zachary finds passion in mele’s scholarship. His thesis, “Nā Hīmeni Hawaiʻi: Transcending Kūʻē, Promoting Kūpaʻa,” focused on notions of resistance and steadfastness in seemingly apolitical mele (hīmeni Hawaiʻi), popular during the time of the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. In mele praxis, Zachary is a member of the 17-time Nā Hōkū Hanohano award-winning group, Keauhou, and the executive director of Kāhuli Leo Leʻa, a nonprofit organization dedicated to catalyzing aloha ʻāina through mele. Prior to pursuing a Ph.D., he was the director of choral music at the Kamehameha Schools Kapālama where he facilitated the value of mele in education and as a powerful tool for self-efficacy. As a Ph.D. student, Zachary strives to utilize multi-disciplinary theoretical frameworks to engage mele, not only as an ancestral technology of knowledge management but as a tool that “creates space” and, therefore, fortifies the fundamental Hawaiian tenet of aloha ʻāina.

Kauwila Mahi - Aloha mai nō kākou e nā hoa makamaka mai ka piʻina a ka lā i Haʻehaʻe a i ka nāpoʻo akula ʻana ʻo ka lā i Lehua. Daniel Kauwila Mahi is a student in the Indigenous Politics program in the Political Science Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He is a Hawaiʻi from Maunalua, Waimānalo, Oʻahuakākuhihewa whose primary focus is on Traditional Governance and Contested Governance in Hawaiʻi through play and games. He is a game developer, programming language developer, rapper, professional Hawaiian Language Translator, and father. His M.A. thesis, “Hawaiian Perspectives on Video Games: Oppression, Trauma, and Pedagogy,” documents the colonial imaginary in Hawaiʻi through pāʻani wikiō (video games) featuring Hawaiʻi while making decolonial interventions. His research interests also include Traditional Hawaiian Religion, Kanikau, Lāhui Hawaiʻi Kūʻokoʻa Specific Laws and Licensures, Contemporary Indigenous Technologies, Decolonial Potentialities, Ea, and Aloha ʻĀina methodologies

Kalikoaloha Martin

Liʻi Nāhiwa

Htet Paing Oo

Nadezna Ortega - Nadezna Ortega Is a PhD student in Political Science specializing in Indigenous Politics. She is an Instructor in the Department of Into-Pacific Languages at Literatures at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her PhD dissertation is on Ilokano women and their use of the Ilokano language in Hawaiʻi

Alyssa Purcell - O wau nō ʻo Alyssa Nicole ʻĀnela Purcell mai ke ahupuaʻa o Waiau ma ke one o Kākuhihewa. I am Alyssa Purcell, rooted in the ahupuaʻa of Waiau on the island of Oʻahu. I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Hawaiian studies from the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies in 2018, and I earned my Master’s in Library and Information Science from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2021. Moʻokūʻauhau (an ʻōiwi conception of genealogy) and Mana Wāhine (an ʻōiwi form of female empowerment) shape my life and research. Having served as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Hawaiʻi State Archives, my past research frames the State Archives’ M-93 Queen Liliʻuokalani Manuscript Collection (M-93) as a relative of the Hawaiian people deconstructs archival practices that neglect the kinship between M-93 and Kānaka Maoli, and re-centers liberatory practices and decolonizing methodologies that strengthen such a bond. In deepening my pilina (relationship) with Hawaiian studies, Library and Information Science, and now Indigenous politics—the three loves of my educational journey, I aim to devise pathways to power that ground Kānaka Maoli in the chaos and confusion of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s cultural bomb, center our distinctly-Hawaiian worldviews, and spur our bones to action. My mission is to restore our people’s agency over our own knowledge and to transform academic institutions into spaces where Kānaka are respected, represented, and connected.

Joon-Ho Roden

Keoni Rodriguez

Sara Maaria Saastamoinen - Sara Maaria Saastamoinen (hän, she, they) is a karjalaine (Karelian), suomalainen (Finnish), and naturalized American who envisions and materializes abundant, radically joyous worlds. She works predominantly as an interdisciplinary scholar, university instructor, multimedia artist, and award-winning activist. Their growing body of work navigates trans-corporeal ecologies of kinship and care with the more-than-human beings with whom we share our home planet. Her work seeks to articulate diasporic constructions of karjalažus (Karelian identity) toward collectively sown abundant futures. Sara teaches futures studies and political science at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa while pursuing their doctorate. She is a past Futures Fellow with the United Nations Development Programme.

Hilinaʻiikaponoaupunioumialiloa Sai-Dudoit

Haʻani Lucia Falo San Nicolas -is a Chamoru and Samoan daughter, activist, and scholar born and raised in the island of Guåhan. She received a B.A. and B.S. in Ethnic Studies and General Biology, respectively, from the University of California, San Diego, prior to attending UH Mānoa. Her research interests are centered around settler colonialism in Guåhan, Chamoru liberation, the significance of Chamoru women/womanhood within the decolonization movement, and the resurgence of Chamoru language and ways of knowing the world. Outside of the program, Ha’ani is an associate producer for Deep Pacific Podcast, a Pasifika podcast with islander views and voices, and loves to hike, play rugby, and cook for her loved ones.

Johanna Kapōmaika‘i Stone

Mahina Tuteur - Mahina is from Koʻolaupoko, Oʻahu, and is concentrating her graduate studies in Indigenous Politics. She is also a Post-Juris Doctor Research and Teaching Fellow at the Ka Huli Ao Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law, where she organizes legal trainings for government decision-makers, facilitates water law workshops for ʻŌiwi communities, and works on various scholarship projects aimed at evolving the law and advancing justice for Kānaka Maoli and other Indigenous peoples. Her research interests include environmental justice, community-based social and political movements, and the emerging reassertion of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination through environmental governance in response to climate change.

Chantrelle Melenani Waiʻalae - calls ʻEwa and Waiʻanae her home. She is passionate about her community and its people, where much of her work is centered in. She is a Ph.D. student with a focus in indigenous politics and public policy and a recent graduate of William S. Richardson School of Law, where she completed a Native Hawaiian Law Certificate. Chantrelle enjoys going to the beach with her daughters, paddling, and being outdoors. Her research interests include community-based mobilization, identity politics, public policy, blood quantum, federal Indian law, family law, resurgence, and place-based research. She is currently involved in community work at Puʻuhonua o Waiʻanae and advocates for survivors of domestic violence and policies to better address violence against women

Kalaniakea Wilson - Aloha kakou, O Kalaniakea kou inoa. He elele au no Ko Hawaii Pae Aina a e hoolaha ana i ka moolelo no ka hookumu ana o ka Hae Hawaii i ka makahiki 1816. He mea nui keia makahiki 2016, He hoolaulea elua haneli makahiki no ka Hae Hawaii. I’m a kanaka maoli in the Hawaiian Kingdom trying to share and celebrate Hawaiian traditions and practices at the highest public educational institution in the Hawaiian Kingdom. I placed three flag poles on Queen Liliuokalani’s birthday, September 2, 2015, at three ahu on the UH Manoa campus in a student collaboration and free education events held at UH Manoa and UH Hilo. My flags to honor and inspire the 200th anniversary of Kamehameha I’s creation of the Hae Hawaii were stolen.