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Research
The Department of History’s research work is strongly grounded in Mindanao and shaped by a commitment to produce outputs that circulate beyond the classroom—through publications, documentation projects, heritage studies, and public-facing histories. Across current engagements (2024–present) and completed outputs (2018–2025), the department’s research shows a steady mix of local focus, field-based work, and wider networks of collaboration.
The Department of History’s research work is strongly grounded in Mindanao and shaped by a commitment to produce outputs that circulate beyond the classroom—through publications, documentation projects, heritage studies, and public-facing histories. Across current engagements (2024–present) and completed outputs (2018–2025), the department’s research shows a steady mix of local focus, field-based work, and wider networks of collaboration.
What We Work On
What We Work On
Mindanao local and regional histories (with strong Iligan and Lanao concerns).
Mindanao local and regional histories (with strong Iligan and Lanao concerns).
A large portion of work is anchored in specific places and historical problem-spaces: Iligan histories (including performance and tradition), heritage corridors and sites, forts, epidemics and disease control in Lanao, and locality-focused studies that treat geography, settlement, and cultural memory as historical materials. The completed outputs show this as a long-running line (heritage tourism, forts, photo-collections as historical sources, local historical mapping), while the ongoing list shows it as sustained institutional work through Kaagi and related projects.
Bangsamoro history, conflict experience, peace, and aftereffects.
Bangsamoro history, conflict experience, peace, and aftereffects.
The department’s research environment is unusually thick in conflict-sensitive scholarship: studies on Bangsamoro grievances and internal challenges, rido-related institutional support, the Marawi siege as recorded history, displacement, painful histories, and peacebuilding narratives. What stands out is not only “conflict” as a topic, but conflict as a historical field that demands documentation (recording accounts, oral histories, comparative memory work) and policy-facing interpretation.
Indigenous communities, language, and documentation work.
Indigenous communities, language, and documentation work.
A strong strand of work focuses on indigenous languages, cultural dictionaries, grammar descriptions, and the lived experiences of IP students, alongside ethnographic histories and studies of practices and knowledge systems. Here the department looks like a hybrid of history and anthropology/linguistics: it treats documentation itself (lexicons, cultural terms, oral histories) as a form of scholarly production—and as a public good.
Archaeology and material history.
Archaeology and material history.
Another defining feature is the presence of archaeology and site-based history: work on Fort Almonte, archaeological surveying in Lanao del Sur, and studies explicitly framed around probing earlier relations (including Meranaw–Chinese relations before 1898). This gives the department a material-method profile that complements its archival and oral-history strengths.
Migration, diaspora, and cross-cultural community histories (including China–Philippines links).
Migration, diaspora, and cross-cultural community histories (including China–Philippines links).
Department research includes sustained attention to Chinese communities and associations in Iligan, family and community histories, and trade/maritime network questions, while current engagements extend this outward through projects framed as “diaspora” and people-to-people bonds between China and the Philippines. The consistent theme is mobility and integration—how communities become local while remaining tied to translocal circuits.
Contemporary social issues approached with historical tools.
Contemporary social issues approached with historical tools.
Alongside “classic” historical domains, the department also hosts research that reads contemporary phenomena historically: subcultures (skateboarding, heavy metal), digital activism, women’s organizing and leadership, disaster risk governance, mining and FPIC questions, and the social implications of drug policy and Tokhang. In other words, the department’s research environment does not treat the present as outside history; it treats the present as a site where historical methods can be applied to living institutions, narratives, and power.
Research Outputs and Collaboration
Research Outputs and Collaboration
From 2018 to 2025, the department recorded 105 completed research outputs: 90 national and 15 international. Within the same period, 32 outputs were produced with external collaboration, reflecting a research culture that values partnership-based work and wider scholarly exchange. The department sustains collaborative links with institutions such as NHCP, DOST, CHED, BCPCH, LGU Iligan City, the Asia Foundation, King’s College London, and Peking University, supporting joint work and broader dissemination of research.
From 2018 to 2025, the department recorded 105 completed research outputs: 90 national and 15 international. Within the same period, 32 outputs were produced with external collaboration, reflecting a research culture that values partnership-based work and wider scholarly exchange. The department sustains collaborative links with institutions such as NHCP, DOST, CHED, BCPCH, LGU Iligan City, the Asia Foundation, King’s College London, and Peking University, supporting joint work and broader dissemination of research.
The feel of the department’s research environment is therefore a multi-method historical practice with three dominant motors: (1) public-facing knowledge production (large collaborative outputs and community-oriented documentation), (2) Mindanao as a research anchor (heritage, conflict, ethnolinguistic plurality, locality), and (3) a porous boundary between past and present (where policy, memory, performance, and contemporary social issues are treated as historically legible). That is why the department’s topics look both grounded and wide: the grounding is regional and community-linked, while the wideness comes from the fact that Mindanao’s historical problems—heritage, war, migration, language, governance—are already regional, national, and international in their connections.
The feel of the department’s research environment is therefore a multi-method historical practice with three dominant motors: (1) public-facing knowledge production (large collaborative outputs and community-oriented documentation), (2) Mindanao as a research anchor (heritage, conflict, ethnolinguistic plurality, locality), and (3) a porous boundary between past and present (where policy, memory, performance, and contemporary social issues are treated as historically legible). That is why the department’s topics look both grounded and wide: the grounding is regional and community-linked, while the wideness comes from the fact that Mindanao’s historical problems—heritage, war, migration, language, governance—are already regional, national, and international in their connections.
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