Home - Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania

Welcome to ASAO
Dedicated to the anthropology of the Pacific region and its peoples.

Annual Meeting 2026: Time to Go Virtual!

Our next annual meeting will be held entirely online from February 4-8, 2026 and hosted on the virtual meeting platform, Whova.
See the April 2025 newsletter for more information and important deadlines.

(To receive the newsletter to your inbox and keep current on all deadlines, become an ASAO member.)

Thanks to everyone who attended the
2025 ASAO Annual Meeting!
February 12 to 15, 2025
Nadi, Fiji
List of Sessions

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The Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO) is an international scholarly society dedicated to the anthropology of the Pacific. ASAO welcomes anyone interested in the lives of Pacific people, including scholars working in Native/Indigenous Studies, Pacific Studies, Cultural Studies, and other disciplines.

For over fifty years, ASAO has served to connect scholars from across the globe and to further knowledge of the Pacific. Our annual meeting has played a role in the origin of several important pieces of Pacific scholarship, including Epeli Hau‘ofa's essay "Our Sea of Islands" and Marshall Sahlins's "Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities".

Our annual meetings are intimate, discussion-based, and cooperative, especially in support of developing topics for publication. ASAO has a book series and a special publication series. Many other publications have emerged from ASAO sessions, including but not limited to those listed in this cumulative bibliography.

ASAO also publishes a newsletter three times per year, with useful information such as annual officer reports, meeting session reports, and community updates.

ASAO supports the full participation of Pacific Islanders through the Pacific Islands Scholars Award (PISA) and encourages members to return information to the source communities from which it came through a program called the Grant to Return Indigenous Knowledge to Pacific Islands Communities (GRIKPIC).

Support PISA

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