Patricia O’Brien presented on the topic ‘After Tautai: Future Inspirations from the Life of Ta’isi O.F. Nelson’ as part of the Centre for Samoan Studies Seminar and Film Series on the 28th February 2019 at the National University of Samoa.
She discussed directions for Samoan history inspired by her research for Tautai – her published book on the life of Ta’isi O.F. Nelson. Some of the questions which she focused on her presentation were; What questions did this book leave unanswered? How can future researchers launch their own research journeys into this past? Where are the most rich sources and how can upcoming Samoan researchers access them?
Patricia O’Brien is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the School of History at the Australian National University. She is the author of Tautai: Samoa, World History and the Life of Ta’isi O. F. Nelson (2017), The Pacific Muse: Exotic Femininity and the Colonial Pacific (2006) and is co-editor with Joy Damousi of League of Naitons: Histories, Legacies and Impact (2018). From 2001 to 2013 she was the resident Australian and Pacific historian at Georgetown University, Washington DC and she was the J. D. Stout Fellow in New Zealand Studies at Victoria University Wellington in 2012 adn the Jay I. Kislak Fellow in American Studies at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, Washington DC in 2011.
