My research activities focus on climate change and human-environment interactions in Mediterranean arid lands through a multidisciplinary approach. With an initial academic background in the archaeology and history of the historic period, I succeeded in mastering the techniques of natural science for multiproxy analysis of palaeoenvironments. My commitment to issues associated with climate change and the relationships between humans and the environment have led me working with multidisciplinary teams in Europe and Tunisia whose focus has been prehistoric and historic archaeology, geography and environmental sciences. I studied in Tunisia, Italy, Spain, and France, and my Ph.D. project investigated playa lake sediment archives from the desert margins of southern Tunisia to reconstruct Holocene landscapes and paleoclimates and has been rewarded with the “APLF award for the best French Ph.D. in palynology” in 2017. In 2018, I was awarded the “ Research talent prize at the Musée de l’Homme”.

My current Athenea3i project, named CERES, is held at the Department of Stratigraphy and Palaeontology under the supervision of Professor Gonzalo Jiménez-Moreno and it develops an interdisciplinary approach by cross-referencing data regarding societies and natural environments within a broad spatio-temporal framework; the aim is to gain a better understanding of multifaceted and non-linear human-environment relationships. The CERES project will document and compare the relationships between human societies and their natural environments during the historic period in two semi-arid Mediterranean areas (Andalusia, Spain and Central Tunisia).

The CERES project includes innovative archaeo-historical and trans-geographical dimensions that will significantly broaden our knowledge of past climate episodes and the associated dynamics of Mediterranean societies. My project will provide a comprehensive historical background highlighting human resilience to environmental change and ecosystems dynamics, which can, in turn, be used to reduce current and future vulnerability to ongoing climate changes and to address the challenges of implementing sustainable development policies.

I have a Bachelor’s degree in Management and Master’s degree in History from the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. In 2014, I obtained my PhD in History from Université Nice Sophia Antipolis in France. Having been unanimously conferred the highest honors (mention très honorable avec félicitations) by an international dissertation panel, I have a proven track record of disciplinary excellence, of studying the social, cultural and economic linkages between the Philippines and the EU, of conducting multidisciplinary research using diverse sources and of seeing research projects through completion.

In the last five years since completing my PhD, I have accomplishments in different areas of academic life: (a) teaching and mentoring, (b) university administration, (c) research and publication, (d) project and budget management, and (e) public engagement.

I am Assistant Professor at the Department of History of the Ateneo de Manila University, where I have been teaching since 2002. Combining my business background with my degrees in History, I served as Chair of the Internationalization Committee and Coordinator for Internationalization of the Loyola Schools of the Ateneo de Manila University between 2018 and 2019.

I am the author of a book chapter and several articles. My book, Clothing the Colony: Nineteenth century Philippine Sartorial Culture, 1820-1896 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2019), was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2019.

I have been the recipient of several awards and grants, including the 2018 Merit Research Awards from the Institute of Philippine Culture, with funding grants from the Ford Foundation. I was Project Director of several projects, aimed at developing new methods of analysis (e.g. combining costume, gender and literary studies) that may be applied to the study of colonial societies in general.

Through my in-depth research on nineteenth-century Philippine clothing culture, I have collaborated with live history theater and film projects by “dressing” historical characters or by aiding scriptwriters with their research. Through these collaborations, I have learned the limitations and challenges of translating historical dress and clothing materials to contemporary costumes.

 

My current Athenea3i project is aimed at gathering, analyzing and contextualizing different types of Philippine textual, iconographic and material (objects and architecture) culture scattered at different repositories in Spain and Portugal. If time and funds permit, the study may be expanded to Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, etc.

The idea is to identify collectors/collections and discover historical realia using peripheral sources such as private holdings belonging to, for example, families that lived or worked at the neighboring countries surrounding the Philippines or that had ties with the Philippines.

More than just a survey or a catalogue of Philippine realia in Europe, my project is aimed at systematically assembling a good combination of digital records and complex sources belonging to overlapping categories and extract value from the varied collections. Analysis of growing data sets characterized by volume and variety can generate new knowledge not only about acquisition patterns in relation to the history of collecting but also about the shared histories of the Philippines, the Iberian world and the EU.

My project has wide applications: it can serve as reference to future scholars as well as to productions of different types, from documentaries to films and theater plays to works of fiction. It can also be used to develop educational content or provide input to tourism publicity campaigns, even games and animations, etc.