Dr. Jesi Lujan Bennett
Dr. Jesi Lujan Bennett is of Chamoru descent with familial ties to Dededo and Barrigada, Guåhan (Guam). She is the Director of Decolonizing Initiatives at the Museum of Us and joined the team in January 2024. She is also a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow for Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and the recipient of the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund for her project, “Chamoru Diasporic Routes: Sharing Our Elders’ Stories from Sanlagu (Overseas).”
Bennett studied at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and earned a Ph.D. in American Studies and Museum Studies. Her areas of interest include Chamoru visual culture with a particular focus in the relationship between colonialism, militarization, migration, and self-representation within the Mariana Islands and the Chamoru diaspora. Bennett’s research examines the outmigration of Chamorus and the way in which these diasporic communities articulate their indigeneity in new geographic and cultural contexts in light of significant political and social change in Micronesia.
