I am a Filipino-Canadian sociocultural anthropologist and my research program and training focus on comparative gender and/or (transgender) queer studies in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines). 

I am writing on the "disrupted" life cycles of Balinese and Singaporean transgender women sex workers by analyzing their diverse experiences and stories of transitioning and de-transitioning (in later life). This includes histories of hormone therapies and sexual reassignment surgeries, participation in beauty and/or sex work, religion, romantic and familial relationships, concepts of national belonging, and death. Data for this research was gathered during my ethnographic fieldwork in the region in summer 2017, in partnership with Project X - Singapore (Singapore) and Yayasan Gaya Dewata (Bali, Indonesia), and under the supervision of Dr. Gregory Forth.

In 2018, I was a Visiting Scholar and Fellow with the Chair in Transgender Studies and the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria. I was honoured as one of Alberta’s Top 30 Under 30 for 2020. This is an annual award and campaign by the Alberta Council for Global Cooperation (ACGC) featuring “30 outstanding young people, nominated by their community and selected by a committee of peers, for their commendable work in making the world a more just, fair, and sustainable place for all.” In 2021, I was nominated and shortlisted for a Golden Balangay Award in Educational Excellence (Post-Secondary), a nationwide search for outstanding Filipino Canadians.

My other research interest is the anthropology of food. I was involved in an ethnographic research analyzing the connection between food, memories, and placemaking among Filipino immigrants in Edmonton. It endeavours to answer the following questions: (1) How do members of the Filipino community strategically decide on the presentation and marketing of their food/cuisine to both Filipino and non-Filipino audience? and (2) How do Filipinos in Edmonton define Filipino-ness through food, eating, and placemaking? Until recently, I was a PhD student with the above-mentioned SSHRC-funded research project and dissertation, supervised by Dr. Helen Vallianatos. I left the program in May 2023.

I teach anthropology courses at the following institutions: NorQuest College (Introduction to Anthropology), the University of the Philippines Baguio (General Anthropology; Human Evolution), MacEwan University (Gender, Age and Culture), and Portage College (Race and Racism in the Modern World). Outside research, I work full-time in Professional Development, Communications, Web Management, and Digital and Social Media in higher education. I split my time between Edmonton and Toronto.