I am an associate professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the National University of Singapore. I was trained in political ecology, environmental sociology, environmental anthropology, and environmental policy at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. My primary research interest lies at the intersection of food, agrarian, and environmental studies, with a particular focus on Southeast Asia. While I consider myself primarily an ethnographer, I also employ quantitative surveys, historical analysis, and cultural studies approaches in my research.
My current research projects include risk assemblages and climate precarity in the coastal Philippines, international migration of Filipino farmers and farmworkers and its implications on agrarian and environmental change in migrant-sending and receiving communities, and the politics of urban agriculture and urban agrarianism in Southeast Asian cities. Previously, I have conducted research on land control in the context of low-carbon development and the green economy, the political ecology and cultural politics of “sustainable” and “healthy” food production and consumption, and the politics of agritourism. My work has appeared in World Development, Journal of Peasant Studies, Journal of Rural Studies, Agriculture and Human Values, Development and Change, Environment and Planning E, Urban Geography, and International Migration Review, among others. I am also co-editor of Halo-Halo Ecologies: The Emergent Environments Behind Filipino Food (University of Hawai’i Press), with Alyssa Paredes. My upcoming book project explores risk-taking and everyday forms of gambling logics embedded in human and more-than-human relations in coastal communities facing extreme weather events in Capiz, the Philippines.
Yasmin Ortiga, my partner, is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at the Singapore Management University. She holds a PhD in Sociology (2015) from Syracuse University, a masters degree in Human Development and Education from Harvard, and Psychology from the University of the Philippines. Her research is at the nexus of migration, labor and skills in Southeast Asia. We have two energetic toddlers who enjoy living in our residence on campus.
Marvin Montefrio 