Kervin teaches cultural studies at DLSU - MANILA

BiographyJose Kervin Cesar B. Calabias is an Igorot Kankana-ey scholar from Baguio City, Philippines. He is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the Department of Literature at De La Salle University in Manila and managing editor of Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance. He formerly served as a Commissioner for Languages of Northern Cultural Communities under the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino in 2024-2025. He has a PhD in Cultural Studies from Lingnan University Hong Kong where he received the Hong Kong Ph.D. Fellowship Scheme and the Belt and Road Scholarship awards. His research areas and publications examine the intersections of contemporary Igorot indigeneity, activism, and social media.Get in touch →

CRITICAL
CREATIVE
LECTURE
AWARDS & MORE

Google Scholar
ORCID
ACADEMIA
RESEARCHGATE
FACEBOOK
Instagram
LinkedIn
Email

CRITICAL WORKS

“Toxic Temporality in the Igorot Kankana-Ey Vegetable Gardens.” Halo-Halo Ecologies, edited by Alyssa Paredes and Marvin Joseph F. Montefrio, University of Hawaii Press, 2025, pp. 105–20. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824899103-009.

“The Ecocritical Erotic in Marjorie Evasco’s ‘Elemental.’” Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance, vol. 3, no. 1, Apr. 2023. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.59588/2782-8875.1050.

"Reclaiming the Indigenous Body: Discourse, Social Media, and Aesthetics of Igorot Activism." Kritika Kultura: Forum Kritika in Honor of Edel E. Garcellano Vol. 0, No. 39, 2022, pp. 520-544. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.13185/KK2022.003924.

“Queering Indigeneity: The Igorot Lesbian Domestic Workers of Hong Kong.” Queer Southeast Asia, edited by Shawna Tang and Hendri Yulius, Routledge, 2022, pp. 117-137. doi: 10.4324/9781003320517.

“Land and (Be)longing: The Cordillera Day and the Affective Politics of Igorot Ancestral Land.” Philippine Indigenous Studies Reader, edited by Leah Abayao, Jimmy Balud Fong, and Carolyn Podruchny, Cordillera Studies Center, 2023/24 (forthcoming).

"The Pliant Indigenous Body: Igorot Domestic Migrant Activism in Social Media." Creativity, Self, and Society Online Working Paper Series, No. 4, 2022, pp. 1-21.

"Death’s Capital: Urban Poor Political Ecology and the Aesthetics of Salvaging by the Nightcrawlers of Manila." Environment, Media, and Popular Culture in Southeast Asia, edited by Jason Paolo Telles, John Charles Ryan, and Jeconiah Louis Dreisbach, Springer Asia in Transition; Vol 17, Singapore, 2022, pp. 119-133. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1130-9_7

"Book review: Affect, narratives and politics of Southeast Asian migration by Carlos M. Piocos III." Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Vol. 14, No. 1. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n1.19

"Research as Homecoming." Introduction. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Linda Tuhiwai-Smith. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021.

"Rituals of Home: Dispatches from the Kankana-ey Vegetable Gardens." Interventions. Contemporary Theatre Review. Winter 2020.

"Mapanganib na Katha: Isang Rebyu ng Bato: The General Ronald Dela Rosa Story ni Adolfo Alix Jr." Katipunan Vol 5, No. 1, 2020, pp 1-1.

"Selected Songs of the Salidummay Cultural Group: An Initial Marxist-Ecocritical Assessment." Unsettling Discourses: The Theory and Practice of Indigenous Studies, edited by Darius Letigio Martinez and Ma. Paula Luz Pamintuan-Riva, The Cordillera Studies Center, 2013, pp. 303-315.