New Faculty Spotlight: Kawano centers Indigenous knowledge and culture

“My research interests are firmly rooted and planted and centered in exploring the intersectional experiences of Native Hawaiian students and educators across the K through 20 pipeline,” she explains. Initially focused on secondary education, her work has grown into a broader examination of how students’ identities shape educational pathways from early schooling through higher education. “I’m interested in analyzing experiences around identity, around race, ethnicity, culture, indigeneity, and then specifically interrogating, critiquing, and challenging the ways in which students come to learn and know whose knowledge is deemed superior.”

Kawano’s own educational journey has played a significant role in shaping her scholarly path. She credits her schooling in a Native Hawaiian-serving K–12 institution with helping her positive identity formation and shaping her belief in the importance of culturally grounded education. 

“Growing up surrounded and immersed in Native Hawaiian cultures and ways of knowing and being — and seeing the ways in which it is still being practiced and lived on an everyday basis in Hawaii — introduced to me the idea that Native Hawaiian knowledge systems are another knowledge system that exists, much like Western colonial knowledge systems,” she says. “Then, matriculating at an undergraduate college where I was definitely the minority, I was exposed to so many other realities and other forms of knowledge systems that maybe didn't appreciate or understand my own ways of knowing and seeing the world.”

Kawano joins BSE as part of the Asian American and Transpacific Futures cluster — an interdisciplinary initiative that aligns with her own values of collaboration, dialogue, and commitment to community. Being part of a cohort of scholars focused on Asian American and Pacific Islander communities was a major draw, as was the warm welcome she received during her campus visit. 

“It really spoke volumes to have felt that warm, welcoming spirit from administrators to faculty to staff to deans,” she recalls. “What drew me and what continues to draw me to Berkeley is that sense of a family that I can already feel.”

Kawano hopes that as a Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander faculty member, she can bring awareness to UC’s commitment to Asian American Pacific Islander representation while also supporting Indigenous students in navigating academic spaces. Ultimately, she says, she wants to “communicate to any and all students I meet that it is not only about representation, but also about being able to see different forms of knowledge represented in classrooms.”