Kalissa Alexeyeff

Kalissa Alexeyeff is an Associate Professor in Gender Studies in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She earned her PhD in Anthropology from the Australian National University in 2004 and has a background in Critical Theory and Anthropology. Her ethnographic research, conducted in the Cook Islands since 1997, explores how gender and sexuality are lived, embodied, and made meaningful in the contemporary Asia Pacific region. Key areas of focus include globalisation and development, Pacific performing arts and material culture, contemporary transgender identities and masculinities, human-animal relations, tourism, and transnationalism. From 2015 to 2019, she held an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship examining gender, migration, and affect in transnational Pacific contexts, particularly circuits of labour mobility involving Australia, the Cook Islands, Samoa, and Fiji.

Alexeyeff has published extensively on these topics. Notable books include Dancing from the Heart: Movement, Gender and Cook Islands Globalization (2009), which investigates the significance of dance to Cook Islands femininity through colonial history and contemporary global manifestations; Gender on the Edge: Transgender, Gay, and Other Pacific Islanders (co-edited with Niko Besnier, 2014), recipient of the 2015 ICAS Book Prize Reading Committee Edited Volume Accolade in the Social Sciences; and contributions to Unequal Lives: Gender, Race and Class in the Western Pacific (2021). Selected articles encompass "Globalizing Drag in the Cook Islands: Friction, Repulsion, and Abjection" (The Contemporary Pacific, 2007) and "Dragging Drag: The Performance of Gender and Sexuality in the Cook Islands" (2010). She has served as Vice President of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies since 2012 and as an editorial board member of American Ethnologist since 2015. Her scholarship influences Pacific studies, feminist theory, ethnography, and the anthropology of sex and gender.

Professional Email: k.alexeyeff@unimelb.edu.au