Island studies has developed into an established, interdisciplinary research field. It is important that island studies not only continue deepening its internal theoretical understandings but also reach out to other fields and regions that have received limited attention within island studies. It is also necessary for island studies to grapple with a number of problematic tendencies within the field and the wider scholarship, including by challenging the misuse of island spatiality to produce idealised visions of islands (for example in island sustainability research). Similarly, it is important to pursue a decolonial island studies that rethinks the ways in which island development research can end up marginalising Indigenous voices at the same time as it seeks to understand islands ‘on their own terms’.