Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu

Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu is a Tongan/Pacific Islander scholar, storyteller and community organizer. Her literary work, community service and academic research are all interconnected and they center issues of: climate and environmental justice, ending violence against women, prison abolition and restorative justice and the protection of Indigenous sacred sites here in the Bay Area such as the West Berkeley Shellmound. She graduated with her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2019 and is a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow and Facilitator of the Oceania Research Working Group in the Department of Native American Studies at University of California, Davis. In Fall 2023, she will start a new job as Assistant Professor of Oceania: Pacific Islands Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Fui is working with Pacific Islander writers and artists at the University of Hawai’i to organize exchange programs and collaborations to create: public talks, symposiums and publications between the UH and UC Santa Cruz with goals to introduce and to expand Pacific Islander literature and arts to a wider audience that includes the Bay Area, California.