Co-Chairs:
Adrian De Leon (History)
Adrian De Leon is an award-winning writer and scholar, and an Assistant Professor of US History at New York University.
His recent books are barangay: an offshore poem (2021) and Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America (2023). His next book, Balikbayan: The Invention of the FIlipino Homeland, is forthcoming.
His writing has been published in: Radical History Review, Journal of American Ethnic History, Amerasia Journal, Trans Asia Photography, Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, positions politics, The Walrus, Washington Post, and more.
He was a writer and co-host for A People’s History of Asian America (2021) and Historian’s Take (2022) on PBS Digital Studios. His recent commentary has appeared in The New York Times, NPR, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, PBS NewsHour, ABC Nightline, The Los Angeles Times, and more.
He received his PhD in the History of Empires, Colonialisms, and Indigeneity at the University of Toronto in 2019. He was the 2023-2024 Jack and Nancy Farley Distinguished Visiting Scholar in History at Simon Fraser University, and, from 2019 to 2024, an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.
He is represented by Johanna Castillo at the Writers House Literary Agency.
Dale Dagar Maglalang (Silver School of Social Work)
Dale Dagar Maglalang (he/they) is an Assistant Professor at NYU Silver School of Social Work. He was previously a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at the Brown University School of Public Health. Dr. Maglalang’s research examines social, cultural, and structural determinants of health, specifically how racism and other forms of oppression influence Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) populations. He has a particular focus on substance use and the intersection of BIPOC with their gender, sexual orientation, and immigrant identities. Furthermore, his research also aims to intervene on the negative effects of racism and other forms of oppression through the implementation of randomized clinical trials informed by strength-based approaches, critical theories and frameworks, and the use of technology.
Dr. Maglalang earned his BS in Human Development and BA in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis, MA in Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, MPH in Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and MSW and PhD in Social Work at Boston College. He was a T32 NIH/NHLBI Postdoctoral Researcher at the Stanford Prevention Research Center at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Steering Committee
Christina DeHaven-Call (Tisch School of the Arts)
Christina DeHaven-Call (she/her) is an Assistant Arts Professor in the department of Undergraduate Film & Television, where she teaches Producing the Short Screenplay and serves as Associate Chair of Production for UGFTV. She holds a BFA in Film & Television Production from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Christina has over 20 years of experience in producing, line producing, and production management that includes short films, feature documentaries, digital series, music videos and commercials. Her films have screened at the Sundance, Tribeca, and SXSW film festivals (3D, CUTMAN), and on HBO (MY UNCLE BERNS, BLACK CARD). Christina’s more recent work includes the fiction podcast WEDNESDAY MORNING, a political satire about the 2020 election directed by Pete Chatmon, and she is currently in production on a documentary for PBS American Masters that will premiere in Spring 2023. She is an active member of the Producers Guild of America and New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT), and has presented and moderated events for institutions including NYWIFT, the University Film & Video Association (UFVA) and the Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF).
In 2019 Christina was honored to be one of seven recipients of NYU’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Faculty Award, and in that same year she was nominated for the David Payne Carter Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2022 she was selected as the Tisch nominee for the University’s Distinguished Teaching Award. Christina has also been awarded several faculty grants through the Office of Global Inclusion, Diversity, and Strategic Innovation to fund projects that support underrepresented filmmakers, including her work with UGFTV’s Filmmakers of Color In Unity and Support (FOCUS) group, and their annual event – the FOCUS Film Festival.
Ruth de Llobet (History; NYU Shanghai)
Ruth de Llobet is a Coordinator of Perspectives on the Humanities and a Clinical Associate Professor of the Writing Program at NYU Shanghai. She holds a PhD in Southeast Asian History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Formerly, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at KITLV, Leiden, the Netherlands, a FASS Postdoctoral Fellow at the National University of Singapore, and a former postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Global Asia at NYU Shanghai. Previously, she taught at the University Pompeu Fabra, in Barcelona, Spain. Her research interests include Southeast Asian history; the political and constitutional history of the Philippines; Asian interconnections, networks, and colonial elites; and the age of revolution in an Asian and global context.
On those subjects, she has published several articles, including: “El poeta, el regidor y la amante: Manila y la emergencia de una identidad criolla filipina” (2009), “Chinese Mestizo and Native’s Disputes in Manila and the 1812 Constitution: Old Privileges and New Political Realities, 1813-1815” (2014); “Luis Rodríguez Varela: Literatura panfletaria criollista en los albores del liberalismo en Filipinas, 1790-1824” (2018) as well as “Spanish Filipinos in Spain’s Constitutional Assembly (1810-1814): Trade and Politics in a Hispanic Border in Southeast Asia” (Forthcoming 2021). She is one of the co-authors of the book Los Roxas. Filipinas en el siglo XIX a través de una familia hispano-filipina (2020) and she is currently working on two manuscripts.
Luis H. Francia (Social and Cultural Analysis)
Luis Francia is an Adjunct Professor in the Asian/Pacific/American Studies program in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU College of Arts and Science. He teaches courses on Filipino language and Asian American literature.
Luis Francia’s latest poetry volume is Thorn Grass. His memoir Eye of the Fish won both the Pen Open Book and the Asian American Writers Workshop awards in 2002. Author of two collections of essays, he is in the Library of America’s Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing. Also a playwright, he teaches Filipino Language and Culture at NYU’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, and was the co-chair of the university’s Sulo: Philippine Studies Initiative from 2020 – 2022.
John J. Gershman (Wagner Graduate School of Public Service)
John Gershman is a Clinical Professor of Public Service, Director of the International Specialization, and Director of International Capstone Programs at Wagner. He is co-director of the NYU Democracy Project and director of the NYU Democracy Scholars program. He is also a co-founder of the New York Southeast Asia Network and co-chair of the steering committee of Sulo: the Philippine Studies Initiative at NYU. He has worked at a series of nonprofit think tanks since the early 1990s, including the Institute for Food and Development Policy, Partners in Health and served as Co-Director of Foreign Policy in Focus. His research, writing, and advocacy work has focused on issues of democracy, food security, U.S. foreign policy in East and Southeast Asia, the politics of international financial institutions and multilateralism, the political economy of natural resource management in Ghana and the Philippines, and rights-based approaches to development.
Agnes “Bing” Magtoto (Social and Cultural Analysis)
Agnes Magtoto is an Adjunct Professor in the Asian/Pacific/American Studies program in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU College of Arts and Science. Bing teaches courses on Filipino language.
Bing is known for Bakit ngayon ka lang? (1994), Sampaguita (2018) and Myself When I Am Real (2024).
Her areas of interest include: language and culture; indigenous Philippine psychology; theater in education; creative pedagogy.
Jordana Mendelson (Spanish and Portuguese; Espacio de Culturas)
Jordana Mendelson received her B.A. in Art History with a minor in Spanish from Boston University (1988) and both her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from Yale University (1993, 1999). Dr. Mendelson’s research focuses on early twentieth-century visual culture in Spain. Her articles have appeared in The Art Journal, Boletín de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza, Catalan Review, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, and Modernism/Modernity. She is the author of Documenting Spain: Artists, Exhibition Culture, and the Modern Nation 1929-1939 (Penn State University Press, 2005) and Revistas y Guerra 1936-1939/Magazines and War 1936-1939 (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2007), and the co-author of Margaret Michaelis: Fotografía, Vanguardia y Política en la Barcelona de la República (Institut Valencià d’Art Moderno, 1999). She has curated numerous exhibitions, including “Other Weapons: Photography and Print Culture during the Spanish Civil War” (International Center of Photography, 2007).
Lara Saguisag (Teaching and Learning)
Lara Saguisag is Associate Professor and Georgiou Chair in Children’s Literature and Literacy in the Department of Teaching and Learning. Prior to joining NYU, Saguisag taught at the College of Staten Island-City University of New York. She earned her PhD in Childhood Studies from Rutgers University-Camden; MFA in Creative Writing from The New School; MA in Children’s Literature from Hollins University; and BA in English from the University of the Philippines-Diliman.
Climate justice and energy justice movements inform Lara’s current research, teaching, and community projects. Through a new book project, she is investigating the ways children’s cultural forms naturalize and interrogate human relationships with fossil fuels. With Dr. Marek Oziewicz, she co-founded Climate Lit, an open-access web resource for teaching climate change and climate justice through children’s and young adult literature.
Dr. Saguisag is also committed to the development of global Filipino Studies. She is particularly interested in studying how Filipino/American children’s literature consider issues of labor, race, and the Philippines’ colonial relationship with the United States. As a member of the steering committee of Sulo: The Philippine Studies Initiative at NYU, she works to promote interdisciplinary and community-oriented scholarship. One of her projects under Sulo is the public syllabus Here Lies Love in Critical Contexts, which she co-authored with Dr. Nerve V. Macaspac (Queens College-CUNY).
Dr. Saguisag’s monograph Incorrigibles and Innocents: Constructing Childhood and Citizenship in Progressive Era Comics (Rutgers UP, 2018) examines how the intertwined discourses of childhood, citizenship, and nationhood were expressed in and complicated by Progressive Era newspaper comics. It received the Charles Hatfield Book Prize from the Comics Studies Society, the Ray and Pat Browne Award for Best Single Work from the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, and an Eisner nomination for Best Academic/Scholarly Work. Dr. Saguisag is also the author of several children’s books, including Animal Games and the award-winning Children of Two Seasons: Poems for Young People.
Dr. Saguisag is an active member of the Children’s Literature Association (ChLA). She is currently Vice-President/President-Elect of ChLA. She is also a founding Editorial Board member of Research on Diversity in Youth Literature (2017-2022) as well as Associate Editor of Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society (2024-2026).
Project Coordinator
Jackie Ruiz
Jackie is a Filipino doctoral student in Teaching and Learning with a focus on Special Education at New York University. She hopes to explore and improve the successes and attainment of students with disabilities with a special focus on inclusion policies, teacher attitudes, placement & curriculum, and postsecondary transition. Prior to joining NYU, she gained experience in teaching, research, and program development through community-based inclusive development programs with parent organizations, higher education institutions, schools, and government – & non-government organizations in the Philippines. Jackie obtained her bachelor’s degree in Physical Therapy at the University of the Philippines and her MEd in Inclusive Education Research, Policy, and practice at the University of Glasgow. Jackie is currently the program coordinator for NYU Sulo.