100-level

PACS111
Pacific Peoples and Societies
Description
This course provides a rich foundation of the history, diversity, and contemporary issues of the Pacific, including diasporic Pacific communities. Students will learn about Pacific Indigenous worldviews, cultures, knowledges, identities and experiences. Students will also explore the structures of Pacific societies and how these are evolving with changes in the modern world. Pacific agency, the transnationalism of Pacific identity and contemporary issues of climate change, sustainability and innovation are themes that run through the course as are the concepts of inclusion, diversity, empowerment, and positive transformation.
Occurrences
Semester One 2026
Semester One 2026 (Distance)
Points
15 points

200-level

PACS211
The Transnational Pacific
Description
This course explores the contemporary Pacific with a special focus on the dynamic and complex interplay of its cultures, identities, and economies. Students will use the lens of transnationalism, to examine the historical and contemporary movement of people, ideas, and resources across the Pacific Ocean, and reflect on how these flows have shaped societies locally, regionally, and globally. Students will engage with themes such as power relations, decolonisation, migration, diaspora, gender, art, sport, cultural hybridity, security, racism, the impacts of climate change, the digital Pacific, and future thinking. Through interdisciplinary readings, case studies, and critical discussions, this course offers a comprehensive understanding of the Pacific peoples’ resilience and innovation in the face of global challenges. Embedded in the course are the perspectives of several community, national, and regional leaders whose expertise will be sought to speak on the course themes.
Occurrences
Semester One 2026
Semester One 2026 (Distance)
Points
15 points
Prerequisites
Any 45 points at 100-level
PACS221
Pacific Sustainability and Climate Resilience
Description
This course examines some of the ways in which community-based indigenous innovation has been used to build up strategies of adaptation and resilience in the Pacific’s oceanic communities. The course offers a critique of the deficit narratives that often characterise Pacific peoples as inherently susceptible to failure, and instead frames sustainability, resilience, and innovation as core features of Pacific peoples’ knowledge and practice for the millennia that they have occupied the Pacific Ocean - the largest single geographical space on the planet. The course acknowledges the rich histories of Pacific communities’ resourcefulness in adapting to environmental pressures and changes. It also explores such aspects of sustainability and resilience as adaptive social organization, coastal management, environmental restoration, food security, adapted building and architecture, and sustainable farming, and reviews how these are used to combat unsustainable economic practices, as well as rising sea levels, extreme weather systems, and other calamities brought about by human induced climate change. Several themes run through the course including the politics and economics of climate change, climate finance, mobility, food sovereignty, health and wellbeing, cultural safe-guarding and transformation, and socio-ecological justice. The course also reflects on the ways that indigenous knowledge, humanities, science and technology can work together to respond to the climate crisis and other natural and human created challenges in the Pacific.
Occurrences
Semester Two 2026
Semester Two 2026 (Distance)
Points
15 points
Prerequisites
Any 45 points at 100-level

300-level

PACS311
Pacific Cultures and Digital Innovation
Description
This course explores the nexus between Pacific Indigenous cultural innovation and digital transformation and how they relate to contemporary socio-economic and environmental challenges. The use of cultural innovation is examined together with mainstream technology including the growing digitalization of Pacific life through financial transfer, communication, art, performance, and family connections across the Pacific, and globally. It looks at how the two engage with each other, and how the new digital transformation has impacted on Pacific communities in profound ways. The course is designed to equip students with a comprehensive understanding of the digital age, the ways that Pacific peoples are engaging with this complex and rapidly changing phenomenon, and how they are preparing for an intensely digital future. It is also designed to encourage students to use the power of their creativity to develop and lead practical digital projects. The course is trans-disciplinary and encourages creative innovation. It may integrate new elements at short notice to reflect the dynamic nature of both Pacific cultures and digital technology, and their constant state of flux.
Occurrences
Semester Two 2026
Semester Two 2026 (Distance)
Points
30 points
Prerequisites
Any 30 points at 200 level from PACS, or any 60 points at 200 level.

Not Offered Courses in 2026

100-level

PACS101
Peopling the Pacific
Description
People, Migration and Culture in the Pacific
Occurrences
Not offered 2026, offered in 2011 , 2012 , 2013 , 2014
For further information see PACS101 course details
Points
15 points

200-level

PACS202
The Pacific Islands: Early European and Polynesian Visions
Description
This course looks at how European and Polynesian visions of 'the other' have intersected over the course of the last five centuries within the Pacific region
Occurrences
Not offered 2026, offered in 2011 , 2012 , 2013 , 2014
For further information see PACS202 course details
Points
15 points

300-level

PACS302
The Pacific Islands: Early European and Polynesian Visions
Description
This course looks at how European and Polynesian visions of 'the other' have intersected over the course of the last five centuries within the Pacific region
Occurrences
Not offered 2026, offered in 2011 , 2012 , 2013 , 2014
For further information see PACS302 course details
Points
30 points