Dr Emma Kluge

I am an historian of decolonisation, international governance, and anticolonial and environmental thinking. I focus particularly on the development of transnational activist networks in the Pacific and the interactions between these networks and international institutions and discourses. My first book, The Limits of Decolonisation, examines the strategies West Papuan activists used to launch an international campaign for independence at the United Nations in the 1960s. My second project, The Green Pacific, focuses on the intersection between anticolonial and environmental thinking and activism in Oceania. 

In my work, I draw on a range of sources, such as petitions, local and international newspapers, and records from personal, governmental, and colonial archives. I also work with oral histories; for my first project I conducted interviews with West Papuans in Papua New Guinea, Australia, and the Netherlands.

I have several publications emerging from this work. In 2020, I published an article in the International History Review, ‘West Papua and the International History of Decolonization’. In 2022, I published my second article in Humanity 'A New Agenda for the Global South: West Papua, the United Nations and the Politics of Decolonisation' which investigated connections between West Papuan activists and African leaders at the United Nations. I'm currently working on other articles on West Papua for special issues focused on decolonisation and petitioning in colonial and post-colonial contexts.