Category Archives: Ongoing Project

I am collaborating with Dr. Alyssa Paredes of University of Michigan Department of Anthropology to organize an academic workshop on emergent issues in Philippine environments and foodways, which we fondly named “Halo-Halo Ecologies” (halo-halo is a popular dessert in the Philippines). The “Halo-Halo Ecologies” Workshop endeavors to explore the intersection of food and environment byContinue reading “Emergent Philippine Environments and Foodways”

Southeast Asian societies are bound to experience extreme and more frequent weather events in the future, which can have serious implications on the food security of rural and urban populations in the region. This project examines climate change impacts on food and agriculture and the ways people’s access to and utilization of food have adaptedContinue reading “Climate Change and Food Resilience in the Philippines”

Urban food growing—in the form of community gardens, commercial urban farms, and vertical and high-tech farms—has been expanding rapidly in the megacities of Southeast Asia since the mid 2010s. For example, urban food growing has been in existence in Manila and Bangkok for many decades now, often manifesting as home and community gardening initiatives inContinue reading “Comparison of Urban Food Growing in Southeast Asia”

With more than half of the population living in cities, there is now a growing interest in producing food in urban areas. Living in Singapore allowed me to see a different kind of urban farming movement. In the United States, there is a tendency for urban farming movements to focus on the issues of foodContinue reading “Cultural Politics of the Singapore Food Commons”

Agritourism (or Farm Tourism) has become not just a popular tourism enterprise, but also a sustainable rural development tool. Governments of developing countries, such as the Philippines, are banking on the income diversification potential of agritourism to uplift the lives of their impoverished small farmers. This research project critically interrogates how agritourism programs are emergingContinue reading “Political Economy of Agritourism in the Philippines”