In 2004, when AAAPS was first mooted, it had been two decades since a conference was devoted solely to an “Australia-Pacific” theme and to showcasing humanities research and teaching about Australia’s relationship with Oceania.

That conference at ANU in 1985 offered an opportunity for scholarly dialogue from the diverse range of fields in which Australian and Australian-based scholars worked on Australian-Pacific relationships and specific phenomenon in the islands. In the following two decades the undergraduate teaching of Pacific Studies waxed and waned and Research Centres opened and closed. But throughout this time an impressive quantity of research was undertaken resulting in monographs, edited collections, conference papers, reports and a long list of Honours, Masters and Doctoral theses. Several parliamentary inquiries also sought to identify policies that reflected past and future directions of the Australia-Pacific relationship.

Australians have maintained a major international role in Pacific Studies research and could fairly be said to lead several fields in a global context. The first AAAPS conference, in Brisbane in 2006, became a forum for the research, presentation and preservation carried out by archives, museums and galleries as well as university teaching and research, along with community-based performance, art and creative outputs. Most importantly the conference was a launching platform for a long overdue national organization to promote teaching and research in Pacific Studies.