‘Atenisi senior lecturer, Vasalua Jenner-Helu, has been accepted as a Visiting Academic in Linguistics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom for three months at the end of the year.

Ms Jenner-Helu, who holds an M.A. Honours in Linguistics from the University of the South Pacific/Vanuatu, intends to research chauvinist attitudes towards Austronesian language among 19^th century British linguists, supporting a forthcoming PhD thesis focusing on the compromise of the Tongan language by European missionaries.

The tenure will give the Tongan scholar access to relevant libraries and institutions at Oxford University to conduct her research.

‘Atenisi dean Dr Michael Horowitz said his university was overjoyed by Oxford’s acceptance of Vasalua’s Visting Academic tenure. “Once again, another member of our circle of faculty and students has demonstrated the esteem by which ‘Atenisi scholars are held by the world’s most prestigious faculties.”

He said her research during the autumn quarter 2024 will be guided by her sponsor, Dr Charlotte Hemmings, author inter alia of "Beyond a two-way typology of Western Austronesian" in the Faculty of Linguistics, Phonetics and Philology at Oxford.