Doctoral Student in History
About
Lopaka is a graduate student in History. His current project concerns applied anthropology and nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. He has researched the carceral history of U.S. imperialism in the Philippines and western Pacific, with a focus on Bilibid Prison and the Presidio de Asan, and has worked on Refaluwasch migrations to and from Guam during the late nineteenth century. Other research interests of his, broadly defined, include the formation of revolutionary anticolonial nationalisms at sites of exile across the Spanish and U.S. empires (1860s-1910s); the conjoined histories of colonialism, labor, and drug-use in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa; and the Austronesian settlement of the Pacific and Indian oceans.
He comes to Ann Arbor from Hilo, Hawai'i, by way of St. Louis, Missouri, where he (allegedly) earned a BA in History and Economics from Washington University.
In his free time, Lopaka likes to fill out bios and write about himself in the third-person.
Publication(s?)
"Autonomy, Mobility, and Identity: The Re Tamuning of Guam, 1869-1901," The Journal of Pacific History 56 no. 4 (2021): 415-36. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2021.1953379
