Felt Research and Bad Feelings in Mindanao and Sulu, Philippines

Monday, 22 June 2026 | 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. | Room 280A, Second Floor, York Lanes, Keele Campus, York University

With Jay Jomar F Quintos, University of the Philippines

In conducting community engagements on the islands of Mindanao and Sulu in the Southern Philippines, I acknowledged the existence of “bad feelings” that open new possibilities in my framing and re-framing, conceptualising and re-conceptualising, and mediating and re-mediating the “field, time, methodology, the writing process, and what we think of as empirical data” (Moussawi 2021, 79).

This presentation explores the concept of “bad feelings” and how it is tied to what Indigenous and decolonial studies scholar Dian Million (2009) calls “felt research” or the figuration and configuration of feelings as theory, which is guided by felt actions or “the actions informed by experience and analysis” (268). I speculate that “bad feelings” and “felt research” are necessary in the way we decolonise the making, remaking, and archiving of life in Mindanao and Sulu.

Jay Jomar F Quintos is Associate Professor of literature and Philippine studies at the University of the Philippines. He obtained his Ph.D. in Indigenous Studies from Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka | The University of Otago in Aotearoa New Zealand. With Mindanao and Sulu Studies, oral literature, and cinema studies as research interests, his critical works have already appeared in various national and international publications. His short story book, Laksang Pakpak na Pumapagaspas, mga kuwento (A Throng of Wings Flapping, stories), was published by The University of the Philippines Press in 2025.

This event is presented by the Philippine Studies Group at York University.

For more information: philippinestudiesgroup[at]yorku.ca.