Catherine Ulep was born and raised in Kāneʻohe, Hawai‘i. Her undergraduate degree in Humanities with double concentrations in History and Hawaiian Pacific Studies was completed at the University of Hawai‘i - West O‘ahu. She, then, attended and graduated with a master’s degree from the History Department at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in 2017. Her master’s thesis, “Women’s Exchanges: The Sex Trade and Cloth In The Early Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i,” draws on archival sources written in both the English and Hawaiian languages to center on the sex-for-goods trade that developed as sailors from all parts of the globe called on the port city of Honolulu. Catherine’s topics of interest include: gender & sexuality, maritime, and commodities. She is currently working towards a Ph.D. in History at the University of Minnesota.