The roundtable is a conversation that takes its cue from the proposition of the Philippine participation. Titled Tripa de Gallina: Guts of Estuary, it focuses on a specific estuary in Manila and its communities, building a discourse around its history and prospecting a future through and beyond the environmental issues it faces.
To create more dynamic contexts in understanding the estuary in Manila, the roundtable invites two scholars who have diligently researched and thought through the role of the ecological and social history of the estuary. Anthony Medrano and Michel Pante will offer insights into the nature and transformation of the estuary in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; the role of the estuary in the discourses and structures of modernity; and the current condition of the estuary in specific locations and the role of communities, governments, development workers, and citizens in the present and future life of the estuary. Moreover, the roundtable will speak to the intersection between contemporary architecture and scholarship on ecological and social history, as well as the consciousness of the Filipino community in Italy of the planetary crisis.
The roundtable will be moderated by Patrick Flores, consultant of the Philippine Arts at Venice Biennale, Professor at the University of the Philippines Department of Art Studies, and Deputy Director at the National Gallery Singapore.
Profile of the scholars:
Michael D. Pante is an associate professor at the Department of History, Ateneo de Manila University, and the chief editor of Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints. He is the author or A Capital City at the Margins: Quezon City and Urbanization in the Twentieth-Century Philippines (Ateneo de Manila University Press; Kyoto University Press, 2019).
Anthony D. Medrano is the National University of Singapore (NUS) Presidential Young Professor of Environmental Studies at Yale-NUS College. He also holds appointments in the Department of History at NUS, the Asia Research Institute, and the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum (LKCNHM).
