Heidi is a PhD candidate who joined RegNet in 2017 to research how the construction of Vanuatu as a post-colonial nation state has impacted Vanuatu’s contemporary approach to, and uptake of, human rights, with a particular focus on issues around women’s rights and culture (or kastom).

With academic training at the undergraduate level in anthropology and applied ethics, and a Masters degree in Anthropology, Pacific and Asian Studies and Social Work that focused on gender, culture, and justice in the context of community based action research, Heidi’s work has focused on Vanuatu and the broader Pacific region for most of the past 20 years.

Originally from Canada, Heidi has been engaged in partnership work with First Nations communities in Canada and with Pacific communities, and was based for nine years at an Asia-Pacific research centre, where she worked mainly in regional program development and management, and also carried out university level teaching and guest lecturing. Prior to this she worked for more than three years at the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta.

Since late 2011 when she returned permanently to Vanuatu with her family, she has worked in a variety of roles relating to community access to justice, with a significant focus on women, gender-based violence, justice and culture.

Re-reading Vanuatu’s national narrative: gender, culture and justice in a post-colonial Pacific state