BC Studies no. 227 Autumn 2025

Christine Añonuevo is the daughter of Socorro Salindong and Jose Ernesto Añonuevo; partner to Guu Si Wil Ak Set and mother of Spencer Wilson. She received her PhD in human and health sciences from the University of Northern British Columbia, where she was the recipient of the 2025 Governor General’s Gold Medal and the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Doctoral Scholarship. She holds a master of adult education and community development from St. Francis Xavier University and a BA in English literature from McGill University.

Allen B. Baylosis is a PhD candidate and a sessional lecturer at the Institute for Social Justice and Asian Canadian and Migration Studies at the University of British Columbia. He is currently working on his research that examines how contemporary aesthetic practices facilitate transnational and transformative discourses on queer, racial, cultural, and sexual politics within the Filipinx Canadian diaspora. He holds an MA in performance studies (New York University) and a BA in speech communication (University of the Philippines Diliman).

Roxanne Angela (Angel) Bella is a researcher, geographer ,and artist who explores the intersections between migrant justice, environ-mental justice, and the arts as a tool for activism. Their newly completed master’s thesis project focused on the role of traditional food knowledge in fostering solidarities within Pilipinx-Canadian diasporic commu-nities, and as part of their relationships with close ties of other global diasporas. Their other research interests include circular economies in the Philippines, local sustainability cultures and responses to single-use plastic crises. As a multimedia creative, their work reflects on transient identities, fluidities/waterscapes intrinsic to diasporic imaginaries, and anything that feels vibrant at the time.

John Paul (JP) Catungal is an assistant professor in the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice and co-director of the Centre for Asian Canadian Research and Engagement at the University of British Columbia. An interdisciplinary scholar trained in the nexus of intersectional feminist studies, queer of colour theorizing, and critical human geography, his research examines community organizing by LGBTQ+, migrant, and racialized communities as practices of knowledge production and placemaking. He co-edited Filipinos in Canada: Disturbing Invisibility (University of Toronto Press, 2012).

Karla Lenina Comanda is a poet, playwright, editor, translator, community-based arts educator, and arts administrator. Her poems have appeared in Contemporary Verse 2, filling Station, decomp, Poetry is Dead, Room Magazine, and others. She has taught writing workshops for the Vancouver Public Library, Migrante BC, La Salle University – Ozamiz, Western Mindanao State University, Co.ERASGA, and other organizations and institutions in Canada and the Philippines. Karla is currently based in Vancouver.

Dada Docot is a cultural and visual anthropologist of belonging and diaspora whose research and creative works lie at the intersections of migration, the rural Global South, Asian studies, and multimodality. She works as an assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue University. She is also associate editor of the multimodal section of the American Anthropologist.

May Farrales is an assistant professor in the Departments of Geography and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University on the unceded territory of the səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ(Tsleil-Waututh), Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), q̓íc̓əy̓ (Katzie), kʷikʷəƛ ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), Qayqayt, Kwantlen, Sem-iahmoo and Tsawwassen peoples.

Dennis Gupa is an assistant professor at the Department of Theatre and Film, University of Winnipeg. Dennis is a theatre director, performance maker/researcher, and applied theatre practitioner. He obtained his PhD in applied theatre at the University of Victoria as a Vanier scholar, MFA theatre (directing) degree at the University of British Columbia, and MA theatre arts at the University of the Philippines. He divides his time between Canada and Southeast Asia where he engages in transnational research, pedagogy, and community-based projects.

Clarissa (Issa) Cecilia Mijaresis a performing artist, teacher, and emerging dance sociologist. Her work explores the intersections of migration, memory, identity, and performance through the lens of 221transnational dance-making. She is currently doing her PhD in sociology at Simon Fraser University. Current technologies allow Issa to remain deeply connected to the Philippines where she maintains her faculty status at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the Ateneo de Manila University. She is also among the proponents of the national standard policies for dance education in higher education institutions in the Philippines through the Commission on Higher Education.

James Pangilinan is a PhD candidate in human geography at the University of British Columbia, which is situated on the unceded, ancestral lands of the Musqueam Nation. Pangilinan’s research traces historical geographies of postcolonial asylum in the Philippines and the relational humanitarianisms organized by refugees at two critical junctures. First, he considers how Filipino elites collaborated with Jewish humanitarians, at the advent of Philippine decolonization before the Second World War, to host refugees in Mindanao. Second, focusing on the closure of Cold War refugee aid in Southeast Asia, he details how practices of refugee care in the “Global South” formed through transnational connections and alternative relationalities of diasporic aid linking the Philippines and Vietnamese refugee activists from post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans East.

Teilhard (Ty) Paradela (they/them) is a cultural historian of modern Southeast Asia, with research interests in media, gender, and human rights. Their current projects include a monograph on the history of mass media audiences in the Philippines and an edited anthology on the emergence of the Philippine LGBTQI+ movement. They hold a PhD in History from the University of British Columbia and currently work as a senior policy analyst with the Government of Canada.

Alvin Erasga Tolentino is a Filipino Canadian contemporary dancer and choreographer who has contributed three decades to the performing arts. He founded Coast Salish-based dance company Co.ERASGA, which is now in its 25th season. His choreographic works explore identity, redress, gender, hybridity, climate action, and cross-cultural collaborations. As an active contributor to the arts, he performs, directs, mentors, consults, curates, and produces.