Meet Makana Kirkey, Our Newest Southeast Asian Studies Librarian and CSEAS Affiliate
Aloha and welcome to Makana Kirkey, our newest Southeast Asian Studies Librarian and CSEAS affiliate. He joined UH Mānoa in August 2026. Read his story here:
Faculty Spotlight: Makana Kirkey
- Southeast Asian Studies Librarian, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
- Affiliate Faculty, Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS)
- Member, Committee on Research Materials on Southeast Asia (CORMOSEA)
Background
Born and raised in Southern California, Makana is a descendant of Hawaiian sugar cane plantation workers who emigrated from the Philippines. He joined the Hamilton Library Asia Collection in August 2026.
He was previously the Getty Vocabulary Program’s 2025-2026 Graduate Intern. Prior to that, he was academically and professionally trained at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he received his Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) in 2025, and his MA in Southeast Asian Studies in 2023. Thanks to the generosity of several libraries and librarians on both sides of Oceania, he has worked with Southeast Asian collections in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Madison, Berkeley, and Los Angeles.
Role at the library
As a Southeast Asian Studies Librarian, Makana is responsible for research materials in any medium, language, and script pertaining to the peoples and cultures of Southeast Asia and its diasporas. He is committed to addressing longstanding challenges to the representation and access of Southeast Asian materials in library catalogs. He cares for UH Mānoa’s Southeast Asia Collection, home to over 100,000 materials in Southeast Asian languages, over 1,000 of which Mānoa is the only holding library. Among these are unquantifiable treasures of manuscript and print, audiovisual nature, maps, microfilm, and more.
Research interests
Having received further training from the Center for Khmer Studies, the California Rare Book School, and the École française d’Extrême-Orient Winter School in Buddhist Textual Studies, Makana is passionate about global book history and bibliography. He is working on an article on early Thai Buddhist printing.
Reference and instruction
Makana welcomes inquiries regarding Mānoa’s Southeast Asia Collection, including requests for research consultation and classroom instruction. Alongside fellow Asia librarians, he is team-teaching a revamped version of LIS 645/ASAN 705: Research Resources for Asian Studies Collections this Fall semester.