Research

My research investigates how societies remember, memorialize, and contest their violent pasts. Working across history, memory studies, heritage studies, and media studies, I focus on the Philippines and Southeast Asia as sites where wars, colonial encounters, and political conflicts have left deep and often competing imprints on public memory. Three interlocking questions guide this work: How do states and communities choose what to remember and what to forget? What role do material and digital spaces play in sustaining or challenging those choices? And how do memorial practices intersect with the ongoing politics of peace, reconciliation, and national identity?

Active Research Grants

Diverging national and digital war commemoration in the Philippines (Principal Investigator)

Funded by the JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists (¥4,290,000 / ~USD 29,000), 2024–2026. This project explores the gap between state-led commemorative practices and the grassroots memory-making that unfolds on platforms like YouTube. By examining how official ceremonies, museums, and monuments diverge from the digital narratives produced by ordinary Filipinos, the research reveals competing visions of the Second World War in Philippine collective memory.

Business for peace in Bangsamoro: Focusing on collaboration between the private and the public sector (Co-Investigator)

Led by Prof. Mari Katayanagi and funded by the JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research B (¥18,720,000 / ~USD 127,000), this study examines how voluntary production and commercial activities emerge in conflict zones and contribute to the stabilization of post-conflict societies. Using the peace process in Western Mindanao (the Bangsamoro region) as a case study, the research also explores the roles that autonomous governments and global corporations can play in peacebuilding.

Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Open Access Book Grant (CHF 11,500 / ~¥2,300,000), 2025. For the open-access publication of Marcos, Martial Law, and the Complexities of Memory in the Philippines, co-edited with K.C. Alvarez and J.E. Pring (Routledge, 2026).

Book Projects in Progress

I am developing two book-length projects that examine the political weaponization of the past and the complexities of wartime narratives.

War on History: How Duterte Weaponized the Philippine Past (co-authored with F. Talamayan): This book investigates the strategic use of historical narratives during the Duterte administration, tracing how the regime appropriated national heroes, manipulated commemorative events, and deployed nostalgia to consolidate political power.

Rehearsing Independence: Propaganda, Nationhood, and the Second Philippine Republic, 1942–1945: Drawing from nearly two decades of sustained research on the wartime Philippines, this project expands upon my M.A. History thesis. It analyzes the complex relationship between state propaganda and the formation of national identity during the Japanese occupation.

The Politics of Memory and Memorialization

A significant portion of my ongoing research investigates how memory is constructed, contested, and materialized in post-conflict societies.

The Memory of the Marcos Regime: My forthcoming co-edited volume, Marcos, Martial Law, and the Complexities of Memory in the Philippines (Routledge, 2026), brings together scholars working on the manipulation of historical memory related to the Marcos era. My own contribution, “Lies Etched in Stone,” examines the Marcos war myth and its memorialization in post-war Philippines.

Post-Conflict Memorialization in the Philippines: I am exploring the politics of memory in various post-conflict contexts, including the 2017 Marawi Siege and the shifting symbolism of the People Power shrine.

Second World War Memory: My research continues to examine the fragmented and evolving memory of the Pacific War in the Philippines, with ongoing projects on the 1945 Battle of Manila, the memoryscape of Los Baños, and vernacular discourses surrounding wartime commemoration.

Digital War Memory

Several of my current projects investigate how digital platforms reshape the transmission and contestation of war memories. This includes work on YouTube as a space for vernacular memory-making and advocacy, spectral aesthetics in online war remembrance, and the role of affective content in sustaining historical narratives. These projects contribute to a growing body of scholarship on digital memory cultures in Southeast Asia.

Heritage and Colonial Narratives

This research area investigates the construction of heritage and its role in shaping colonial and post-colonial narratives. My work examines how historical figures and sites are leveraged to create specific, often politically charged, versions of the past. Ongoing projects include a study of Intramuros and Corregidor as palimpsests of Philippine colonial memory, and a critical examination of heritage translocation at Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar.