Rate My Professor Joe Genz

Joseph H. Genz serves as Chair and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawaiʻ i at Hilo, positions that reflect his extensive contributions to Pacific anthropology. He joined the university as a Visiting Assistant Professor in 2012, advancing to Assistant Professor from 2013 to 2018, Associate Professor from 2018, and Professor. Additionally, he directs the Islands of Opportunity Alliance (IOA)-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation since 2017 and coordinates the Certificate in Pacific Island Studies since 2016. After earning his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Hawaiʻ i at Mānoa in 2008 and M.A. there in 2003, Genz obtained a B.S. with honors in Zoology and German from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1997. His interest in anthropology developed during undergraduate study abroad in Germany and deepened as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Samoa from 1997 to 1999. Prior roles include Cultural Specialist at Cultural Surveys Hawaiʻ i from 2009 to 2012 and Lecturer at the University of Hawaiʻ i at Mānoa and Kapiʻ olani Community College from 2007 to 2012.

Genzʻs research centers on the anthropology of voyaging, navigation, and seafaring in Micronesia, with emphasis on Marshallese wave piloting, cultural revival, oral histories for climate resilience, computational modeling of ancient seafaring, and intersections with neuroscience. Projects involve collaborations with Stanford University, Harvard University, and communities in the Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia. He authored Breaking the Shell: Voyaging from Nuclear Refugees to People of the Sea in the Marshall Islands (University of Hawaiʻ i Press, 2018) and edited Voyaging in the Pacific (2023) and Militarism and Nuclear Testing in the Pacific (2016), both in the Teaching Oceania Series. Genz has published peer-reviewed articles in Ethos, American Anthropologist, Oceanography, Journal of the Polynesian Society, and others, including ʻComplementarity of Cognitive and Experiential Ways of Knowing the Ocean in Marshallese Navigationʼ (Ethos, 2014), ʻLimits of Language for Conveying Navigational Knowledgeʼ (American Anthropologist, 2012), and ʻWave Navigation in the Marshall Islandsʼ (Oceanography, 2009). He secured funding such as a $3.9 million NSF LSAMP grant as co-PI (2018-2023) and mentors students on theses and STEM research for Pacific Islanders. His scholarship, featured in The New York Times Magazine, advances Pacific cultural preservation and resilience.