Graduate Associate
Doctoral Candidate
Graduate Programme in Geography, York University
Research Keywords:
New geographies of class power; Filipino conglomerates; neoliberalism; globalization; urbanization; Philippines
Research Region(s):
Philippines, Southeast Asia
Research Diaspora(s):
I am a PhD candidate in human geography at York University, and a Graduate Associate with the York Centre for Asian Research.
My current research is about the new geographies of class power. I am paying specific attention to the diversification of the largest Filipino conglomerates from 2000 to 2015: how this was shaped, and was shaped by, the place-specific, historically-contingent forms that neoliberalism, globalization, and urbanization had taken in the Philippines. In the process, I aim to shed light on ongoing resurgences of class power in societies like the Philippines: Southern, structurally-adjusted, lower-middle income, and urbanizing, with newly-energized oligarchies and weak, captive states; markets where the next trillions in profits are to be made; places that are so far off the theoretical maps of restored class power.
I had previously worked on ‘disasters’ and the definition and control of unwanted urban populations for my masters at the University of Manchester, and on corporate malfeasance for my bachelors from the University of the Philippines Diliman, both in sociology. Beginning in 2008, I have also taught and designed undergraduate courses on contemporary issues in the Philippines, cities in the global South, and the global economy, both at UP Diliman and at York.
I maintain an interest in the overlaps between research, public due diligence, and investigative journalism. My work has been featured by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Talk of the Town, and as a special report on ABS-CBN News.
With C.J. Chanco and Chaya Ocampo Go, I am also a co-convenor of Alitaptap Collective, a network of overseas Filipin@ students for mobilizing critical research and building transnational solidarities. Much of my work on this website are attempts at bridging research and journalism, but I feel this approach is running up against its limits. I now want to put more energy into speculative fiction and creative non-fiction, about landscapes, canceled futures, and political imagination. To this end, I breathe and observe at godblessmytrip.tumblr.com.
Some recent interests: hauntology from/of the Third World; culturejamming social media; modding as a generative/poetic/imaginative exercise; pop culture as spaces of encounter, and how frameworks of taste act as boundaries within these spaces.