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A  Geospatial Sea of Islands


with Sophia Perez, Elizabeth Fiske, Zac Thorpe and Richard Villagomez

“There  is a world of difference between viewing the Pacific as “islands in a  far sea” and as “a sea of islands.” The first emphasizes dry surfaces in  a vast ocean far from the centres of power. Focusing in this way  stresses the smallness and remoteness of the islands. The second is a  more holistic perspective in which things are seen in the totality of  their relationships.“

- Epeli Hau’ofa, 1994, Our Sea of Islands

A Geospatial Sea of Islands is a collaborative spatial data project, working the the Critical Pacific Island Studies Collective. It starts with the Pasifika Film Database - a database which seeks to platform Pacific Island films and filmmakers, and is reshaped by the ways in which historic and colonial imaginaries of Pacific territories penetrate even the most benign cartographic software.

Contemporary geospatial data flattens islands into mismatched hierarchies, making Pasifika places difficult to see, analyze, or represent on their own terms. A second part of this project - the Geospatial Sea of Islands - breaks those structures open and refuses the inherited spatial logics that reduce Pacific worlds to countries, territories, and administrative fragments. By exploding Oceania into approximately 1,700 individual islands, it builds an island-first spatial dataset that can be recomposed by communities, researchers, and practitioners into geographies that make sense for lived Pacific realities. Delivered through an open, interactive web app, the project creates space for new forms of analysis, care, and self-determination, laying the groundwork for future community-led mapping across Oceania and its diasporas.


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