I had a fantastic time in Singapore attending the Humanitarian Futures Forum hosted by RSIS | S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in collaboration with the Singapore Ministry of Defense and the Changi Regional HADR Coordination Centre (RHCC). Very honored to be invited to participate in this multi-stakeholder dialogue as a panel reactor. So many connections made and lessons learned. Thank you to Dr. Alistair Cook for including my voice in this important gathering and congratulations on your new edited volume!
Know more about this event here: https://www.rsis.edu.sg/research/nts-centre/centre-resourcescnts/hff2024/
Check their book which looks into the 20th year remembrance of the Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami. https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/14090?srsltid=AfmBOorvDd4BJwvqpp-rTF0nppT65Vi0EUQpFsWc6U69NVJcl80gKuqX#t=aboutBook
Delivered a plenary talk on the role of women in disaster preparedness and humanitarian action in the BIMP-EAGA region for the International Conference on the UN SDGs and Social Innovation 2024 (Sept 19,2024). I wish I could have attended in person but I am still in Sarawak doing fieldwork for our flood preparedness project. In my closing, I argued “Decentering power here doesn’t just mean including women in discussions—it means recognizing that women’s actions are redefining what disaster preparedness and recovery should look like, especially in contexts where official responses are slow or absent.”
Thank you again to the organizers specially to Dean Sittie Pasandalan of Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology. Thanks as well to HHI Resilient Communities for the recommendation and Mark Daza for the photo. Read more about the event here
⬇️https://www.facebook.com/share/p/4mvoJm93Eby1gf9F/?
Congratulations to the organizers and participants of the 8th Civilian-Military Humanitarian Coordination Research Symposium and Workshop. This is a gathering that I look forward to every year as it brings a multisectoral cohort to discuss pressing concerns and directions in civil-military humanitarian coordination. Beyond ideas shared, it’s the lasting relationships formed that makes the future of humanitarian action a more hopeful one. This year I presented on smartphone ethnographic approach in understanding humanitarianism in the Armed Forces of the Philippines which I am co-authoring with Fred Precillas. It was also wonderful to have co-led the panel with Col. TJ Shanks on Climate Change and Coastal Resilience. Recognizing my close collaborators for publication, Dr. Natalie McLean and Dr Andrea Ciletti, from Australian Civil-Military Coordination and the US Center for Excellence in Disaster Management. Thank you to the organizing committee from Brown University Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies, US Naval War College, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and World Food Program.
By invitation of the Canada High Commission in Brunei and the Brunei National Disaster Management Centre, I spoke as a panel member for the theme “The role of women in disasters.” The event was attended by 70 participants from the diplomatic corps and other agencies. Some of the key points I shared:
- Women are disproportionately impacted by disaster. Read more here: https://www.undp.org/blog/women-are-hit-hardest-disasters-so-why-are-responses-too-often-gender-blind
- Women have been actively engaging with disaster preparedness and humanitarian action. Highlighted the works of women in leadership roles and those who through informal network mobilized their communities. I drew from this coauthored paper on CSOs during the pandemic. https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0002341
- Disasters are not natural. I emphasized that the experiences of hazards (ie vulnerability of women and the extent of their participation in preparedness) are significantly impacted by policies and programs that often exclude their voices.
You may watch our full conversation here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4E5er4B2uO/?igsh=MTNkNTNpajZiazV3ZQ==
I was invited to present my work on Civilian-Military humanitarian coordination post Super Typhoon Rai (Odette) in Palawan Philippines at the Regional Consultative Group convened by UNOCHA, Australian Civil Military Centre, and US Centre for Excellence in Disaster Management & Humanitarian Assistance held at Timor Plaza Hotel from December 4-7,2023. My sincerest thanks to Nidhirat Srisirirojanakorn and the entire RCG Secretariat for the wonderful accomodation and this opportunity to share to a broader audience my work. Also recognizing the warm hospitality of the Constitutional Government of Timor Leste.
It was truly an honor to have been able to share key lessons learned in humanitarian action in an island that has never experienced such magnitude of disaster. I would like to thank all the individuals and communities who participated in this study. Your voices were heard. I would also like to give special thanks to the local researchers who aided in the data collection process Cristine Pingal, Ana Maica Abrea, and Ana Alejandria.
Please see other presentations here
Excellent experience at the #NEEDS2023 in University of Twente. I co-convened 3 panels With Kaira Zoe Alburo-Cañete Kirstin Kreyscher and Yvonne Su on the topic of Creative and Reflexive Methodologies in Disaster Studies which was inspired by the Special Issues with the same title for the Journal of Disaster Prevention and Management.
I also presented my paper which troubled the concept of informality both as a space in urban settlements and as a practice by community leaders cum humanitarian actors.
It has been a whirlwind of an event for something that we’ve been working on for a year. And now that the dust has settled, I’m glad that it turned out well. We accomplished what we intended: a multi-sectoral safe space, a network for future collaboration, and publications on the way to address Complex Disasters Governance in Southeast Asia. Working with co-convenors Pamela Cajilig, Will Smith, Rob Grace, Veronica Gabaldon, and Jeremiah Opiniano has allowed for the achievement of these objectives. The support provided by UST RCSSED staff and interns has made every logistical and technical matters manageable. I will continue to contribute to this space with my continued work on Humanitarian Coordination in the sub-region of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
This week UBD welcomed exchange students from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. I was invited to be one of their lecturers. My first lecture was about food production cycle where I used my work on pagpag (recycled food) as a case study. Today’s lecture was on disaster and agriculture where I drew from my previous project on Balut consumption and production in the Philippines. What better way to end my engagement with these students than to let them try the food that we were discussing? So, from our dependable Filipino store here, I brought balut in class. Students kept asking each other “oishi?” Most interesting part is that once they overcame their initial fear of the bird inside, they decided to dive head on and eat even the feathery chick! Hoping to bump into these students again this December in Tokyo 
All photos taken and posted with consent.
Thanks again to the LRD DOST PCAARRD for funding the balut project in 2018. Parts of my lecture today featured how the agency has been aiding the industry to flourish through research and development.
Read our works on this here:
https://journalofethnicfoods.biomedcentral.com/…/s42779…
https://smujo.id/aja/article/view/5233
On May 22-24, 2023, I participated in the 7th Annual Civilian Military Humanitarian Coordination hosted by Brown University Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies where I also serve as a Global Fellow. The by-invitation event gathered over 80 leading global and local humanitarian workers and researchers. I co-facilitated the Urban Humanitarian Coordination Working Group with Dr. Ronak Patel of Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.
Presented my paper entitled “The Undocumented Foodscape: Food (In)Security, Disaster, and the Shifting Ecologies in an Urban Informal Settlement in Manila” at the 2023 Association for Asian Studies Conference in Sheraton Hotel, Boston, USA. This paper will come out as part of an edited volume on food ecologies in the Philippines.
Served as panel evaluator for the 9th World Conference for Women’s Studies which was held in Bangkok, Thailand. Fantastic papers from the panel on Women’s Health and Reproductive Rights. Sadly, I missed out on the 2nd panel on Empowering Marginalized Communities due to connectivity issues. You can read more about the conference and the papers here: https://womenstudies.co
Presented the preliminary findings of our project “Sociocultural Determinants of Pediatric Tuberculosis among Children Living in Informal Settlements” at the 2019 AAS-in-Asia conference. The paper was funded by the DOST-NRCP and was co-authored with Ms Edlynne Martinez. This panel entitled “Philippine Futures: Ambivalence in the Claws of Dispossession” was organized by Dr Noah Theriault of the Carnegie Mellon University. With me in the panel are Dr Joseph Palis of UP Diliman and Ms Tin Alvarez of University College London.
Presented two lectures for the Fellows of the BIARI Philippines 2018 Community Resilience for Natural Disaster held in Clark Pampanga. Photo on the left was from my lecture on October 26, 2018 about “grant opportunities for research and collaboration”. Photo on the right was from my lecture on October 22, 2018 about “Framing Disaster Vulnerability in an Informal Settlement”. See more of BIARI Philippines 2018 related information in the BIARI Philippines here.
Ancheta, A., & Gonzalez, M. C. (2013). Perceptions on the Dangers of Flooding among Selected Children: The Case of Baseco Compound. 4th Asia Pacific Conference in PublicHealth. Nha Trang: Vietnam Public Health Association and Asia Pacific Public Health Association.
Gonzalez, M. C. (2013). The Karton Girls: The Impact of Climate Change on Selected Young Women of Cebu. 4th Asia Pacific Conference in Public Health. Nha Trang: Vietnam Public Health Association and Asia Pacific Public Health Association.
Alejandria, M.C. (2007) Of Aglipayans and El Shaddais: The Paradigm Shifters of Popular Catholicism in the Philippines. 2nd Graduate Workshop on Piety and Pietization in Asia. Singapore: Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.
Alejandria, M. C. (2008). Pala’wan Customary Laws: Conflict Resolution in the Context of Legal Pluralism. 8th International Conference on Philippine Studies. Quezon: International Conference on Philippine Studies
Gonzalez, M. C. (2011). Think Positive: HIV Risk Reduction or Disaster Mitigation? 20th Conference of the International Federation of Social Science Organizations. Batangas: International Federation of Social Science Organizations
Gonzalez, M.C. (2018). Pocket of Urban Exclusion: Constructing Vulnerability and Well-Being among Child Scavengers in a Reclamation Area in Manila. Presented in the 2018 Association for Asian Studies Conference. Washington, DC
Gonzalez, M.C. (2017). Surviving the Old Tides: Disaster Resilience Among Food Insecure OlderAdults in an Urban Poor Settlement in Manila. Presented in the 2017 Association of Asian Studies Conference. Toronto, Canada/ (also presented at) 38th UGAT Conference. Quezon City. Ugnayang Pang-Aghamtao
Gonzalez, M.C. (2017). Thinking of Kapatiran: Older Adults’ Aspirations for Well-Being In an Informal Settlement in Manila. Presented in the 10th International Conference of Philippine Studies (ICOPHIL).
Gonzalez, M. C. (2016). Food Insecurity and Resilience in Manila Slums: Hunger and Poverty among the Elderly. 75th Conference Association for Asian Studies. Seattle: Association for Asian Studies.
Others presentations:
Gonzalez, M. C. (2012). Towards an Engaged Learning: Teaching Anthropology to Hospitality Majors. International Conference of Association of Southeast Asian Institutions of Higher Learning . Manila: Association of Southeast Asian Institutions of Higher Learning
Gonzalez, M. C. (2012). Positibo: Achieving Well-Being Among Young People Living with HIV in Cebu. 11th Asia Pacific Sociological Association Conference. Quezon: Asia Pacific Sociological Association.
Alejandria, M. C. (2008). The Land of Maman Kaki: A discourse on Pala’wan Land Management. Seminar Workshop on Applying Social Theory for New Understandings of Swidden Agriculture. Los Banos: Wenner Gren Foundation, Wolrd Agroforestry Centre, and University of Queensland.
Maria Carinnes P. Alejandria 
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