From Pitcairn to the Pacific: Islands, Influence, and Oceanic Entanglements
Montag, 13.04.2026, 18:30 UhrVortrag, Wien
Ort: HS A, Institut für Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie, Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Wien Vortragssprache: Englisch
From Pitcairn to the Pacific: Islands, Influence, and Oceanic Entanglements
Lecture by Sebastian Jablonski (University of Potsdam)
This lecture explores how the Pacific can be understood not as a remote and fragmented region, but as a space of deep connection and entanglement. Starting from the history of Pitcairn Island, I examine how British and American actors extended their influence across oceanic worlds through religion, commerce, and narrative as much as through formal power. To capture these dispersed yet connected forms of soft imperial reach, I propose the concept of the influpelago. The lecture offers a new way of thinking about islands, empire, and the circulation of ideas across the sea. In doing so, it challenges familiar European ways of imagining distance, periphery, and power.
Sebastian Jablonski is a PhD candidate at the University of Potsdam. His research focuses on nineteenth-century Pacific literature and history, especially on Pitcairn Island and its wider oceanic connections. He is interested in how narrative, religion, and mobility shaped archipelagos of influence across the Pacific, and in how archipelagic approaches can challenge Eurocentric understandings of space, distance, and power.
