About Me
Transdisciplinary Researcher & Artist
(Irvine, USA)
(Irvine, USA)
As a transdisciplinary researcher, I examine the intricacies of power and extractivism. My primary interests are mining, epistemology, violence, law and society, and the intersection of power and knowledge production. While my main focus is the island province of Cebu in the Philippines, my work spans a broader geographic area (Brazil, Kingdom of Tonga) and I'm currently figuring out how this fits into my current research.
I am currently a Phd student in Global Studies at the University of California, Irvine located within the traditional and unceded ancestral homelands of the Acjachemen and Tongva Nations now known as Irvine in Orange County, California (USA).
*Visiting Research Fellow, Geography Department, University of the Philippines-Diliman, 2023-2024 (Ph)
* M.A. Sociology, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, 2023 (Us)
*Certificate IV Community Services - Technical and Further Education (TAFE) NSW, 2015 (Au)
* B.A. Communication, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, 2014 (Nl)
With a Dutch mother and a Filipino father, living between the Netherlands and the Philippines has informed how I view the world. I became accutely aware of narratives and events characterizing the 90s and the early aughts. This includes the Balkan war, the refugee crises, assassination of political figures, the second People Power Revolution in the Philippines, and the onslaught of terrorism in its multiple configurations. I also became aware of the politics behind the destruction of Bantayan Island in Cebu, Philippines - my paternal home - including its impact on families, communities, and the physical geography of places. This grounds my work spanning radio and public broadcasting, community-based projects on Bantayan Island, interviews with small-scale miners in the Kingdom of Tonga, artists and farmers in Australia, and my on-going work focusing on extractivism. My training in social work, particularly the counseling interview process, forms the basis of my ethnographic methodology and approach to research.
I have contributed articles and radio features to SBS Radio, Art Monthly Australasia, Kantor Berita Radio, and NTU Centre for Contemporary Art’s ‘Climates. Habitats. Environments.’ and exhibited at Firstdraft and 55 Sydenham Rd in Australia. I was a visiting scholar/artist at ‘Atenisi Institute (Nuku’alofa, Kingdom of Tonga, 2018;2019), Tropical Futures Institute (Cebu, Philippines, 2019), and the East-West Center (Honolulu, Hawai’i, 2020).
In the spring of 2023, I completed my M.A. in Sociology at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. I was the recipient of the Center for Philippine Studies’ Corky Trinidad Endowment Scholarship at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa in support of my research on an epistemology of extraction.
