Symposium
October 31, 2026
Time: 3:30 PM-5:30 PM
Venue: To be announced (TBA)
Challenges and Possibilities of Philippine Studies in a Turbulent World
Situating Question and Questioning Positionality
This symposium aims to provide a space to consider what questions Philippine Studies can raise in today’s turbulent and unsettled world, and how Philippine Studies itself might be critically examined. At the same time, it seeks to offer an opportunity to reflect on our own positionalities as those who pose questions, to shift these positions in subtle ways, and to engage in dialogue by moving between and across one another’s standpoints.
Speakers and Participants
Introductory Remarks
Dr. Asuna Yoshizawa (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
Keynote Address
Dr. Ramon G. Guillermo (University of the Philippines Diliman)
Panelists
Dr. Ramon G. Guillermo (University of the Philippines Diliman)
Dr. Eri Yamashita (Ritsumeikan University)
Reina Cristine Kudo, M.A. (Hitotsubashi University)
Dr. Dada Docot (Purdue University)
Moderator
Dr. Zenta Nishio (Ehime University)
Dr. Asuna Yoshizawa
Asuna Yoshizawa is a lecturer at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, specializing in cultural anthropology and Philippine studies. She received her Ph.D. in Area Studies from Kyoto University, based on long-term fieldwork in Mindanao. Her research focuses on interreligious and interethnic relations and everyday practices of cultivating peace in the southern Philippines.
Her recent publications include an article on the identity and religious practices of Balik-Islam (Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations) and an article on women’s narratives of polygyny and interreligious marriages (Feminist Anthropology). Her current book project, Living with Shifting Voices, examines everyday negotiations of intimacy and violence in Muslim–Christian and settler–indigenous relations in Mindanao, exploring how these shifting voices challenge colonial binaries and illuminate possibilities for cohabitation.
Dr. Ramon G. Guillermo
Ramon Guillermo is the director of the Center for International Studies (CIS) at the University of the Philippines Diliman. His main research projects are on the textual transmission, dissemination, reception, and translation of ideas and ideologies in Southeast Asia. He is also a strong proponent of the development of Philippine Studies as an autonomous academic communication community as well as a practicing translator from various languages into Filipino and English. In all of his research undertakings, he has initiated the use of novel techniques and approaches from translation studies and digital humanities in the Philippines. He has served as a Faculty Regent of the University of the Philippines and is one of the initiators of the Network in Defense of Historical Truth and Academic Freedom.
Dr. Eri Yamashita
Eri Yamashita works at the intersection of Disability Studies, Philippine Area Studies, and Cultural Studies. Her research focuses on Deaf culture, sign language, embodiment, sensory experience, and colonialism, especially in the Philippines. Through historical research and fieldwork with Deaf communities, she examines the relationships among sensory colonialism, linguistic hegemony, and the cultural practices of disability. She is the author of Sensory Colonialism and Linguistic Hegemony: The Body and Cultural Practices of Deaf People in the Philippines.
Reina Cristine Kudo, M.A.
Reina Cristine Kudo was born in Metro Manila to a Japanese father and Filipina mother. She spent her childhood between the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Japan, experiences that continue to shape both her academic and personal interests. She is currently supported by the SPRING fellowship program. Her research specializes in sociology, mixed-race and “hafu” studies, kinship, race and ethnicity, and autoethnography. Her current project explores the kinship practices of Japanese-Filipino individuals within transnational social fields, focusing on how family relationships, belonging, and identity are negotiated across borders. Drawing from both academic inquiry and lived experience, her work seeks to bridge personal narrative and sociological analysis. She is the author of A Little Bit Yours, which reflects on her experiences navigating language, migration, identity, and belonging as a Japanese-Filipino individual growing up across multiple cultural and national contexts.
Dr. Dada Docot
Dada Docot is a diasporic anthropologist of the hometown and the Filipino diaspora. She is a visual and cultural anthropologist who works as an associate professor of Anthropology at Purdue University. At Purdue, she founded The Alab, a multimodal laboratory-gallery that expands possibilities for creativity among faculty and students. Her first book “Town of Dollars: Ambient Violence and Everyday Dispossession in the Philippines” (2026), published by University of Washington Press, is based on her ethnographic fieldwork in her hometown in Bicol, Philippines. She is also co-editor of the award-winning collection “Plural Entanglements: Philippine Studies” (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2023). She currently serves as associate editor of the multimodal section of the American Anthropologist. She has published broadly on migration, visual anthropology, and multiple colonialism, among others.
Dr. Zenta Nishio
Zenta Nishio is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Law and Letters, Ehime University. His main research projects focus on issues related to urbanization in the Philippines and forms of people-led infrastructure construction, particularly the case of the jeepney. More recently, his research has centered on the decolonization of urban concepts as a framework for investigating forms of resistance and alternative social imaginaries. As part of these broader research interests, he has conducted interviews with scholars such as Syed Farid Alatas of the National University of Singapore and Husein Inusah of the University of Cape Coast. Through these engagements, he has sought to introduce to Japanese society diverse approaches to decolonial knowledge production across different social and intellectual contexts.