I am a historian and peace studies scholar specializing in the study of memory and heritage related to wars, conflicts, and disasters. My work explores how societies remember and memorialize violent pasts, with a particular focus on the Philippines and Southeast Asia.
I hold a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Heritage Studies at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hiroshima University, where I am also a Research Fellow at the Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS). My research interests include international history and politics, memory studies, heritage studies, and media studies, with a focus on the memorialization of conflict, peace process mediation, historiography, and the intersection of heritage, peace, and sustainability.
I earned my Ph.D. from Hiroshima University and my M.A. and B.A. in History (cum laude) from the University of the Philippines Diliman. My work has been published in journals such as Memory Studies, the International Journal of Heritage Studies, the Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, and Philippine Studies. I am the author of War Memorialization and Nation-Building in Twentieth-Century Southeast Asia (Routledge, 2025) and co-editor of the forthcoming Marcos, Martial Law, and the Complexities of Memory in the Philippines (Routledge, 2026).
Outside academia, I co-host PODKAS, a podcast on Philippine history, politics, and society, which I produce with my friends. Find out more about the show here: www.podkas.org.
JOHN LEE CANDELARIA 