Welcoming Mara Mulrooney, Ph.D.

We are excited to announce that Mara Mulrooney has joined the Pacific Legacy team in the Kailua office! Dr. Mulrooney has led archaeological projects in Hawai‘i, Rapa Nui, Aotearoa New Zealand, Guam, and Papua New Guinea. In addition to her archaeological experience, she brings a great deal of museum-based cultural resource management expertise to our team.

Dr. Mulrooney specializes in landscape archaeology and is knowledgeable in GIS-based applications to spatial analysis, lithic sourcing techniques, and archaeological collections curation. Since 2005, she has published numerous research articles that explore socio-political development and agricultural intensification in Hawai‘i and Rapa Nui. Her doctoral dissertation challenged long-held beliefs about socio-political changes on Rapa Nui, and her Rapa Nui-based work has been published in numerous venues. She has also published articles that track trade and exchange throughout the Pacific through the lithic sourcing of museum collections using portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) techniques.

Dr. Mulrooney recently served as the Director of Cultural Resources at the Bishop Museum, where she led six departments and managed diverse projects which included collections curation, strategic planning initiatives, community outreach initiatives, and the development of numerous interpretive displays and major exhibitions. Most recently, she curated a major exhibition at Bishop Museum entitled “Rapa Nui: The Untold Stories of Easter Island” and co-curated an exhibition at the local museum on Rapa Nui entitled “Hare Tao‘a, Hare Tangata.” Dr. Mulrooney currently serves as interim editor of the Rapa Nui Journal, a peer-reviewed journal published by the University of Hawai‘i Press and has recently served on the board of directors for the Society for Hawaiian Archaeology.