Spotlight – Faculty/Students

From: Positively Filipino, They Blazed a Path for Us — Positively Filipino | Online Magazine for Filipinos in the Diaspora

So, last August 31, Positively Filipino paid tribute to 12 outstanding manongs and manangs who have paved the way for us to have a better life in America, whose shoulders we proudly stand on.

Their stories are testaments to the hardship, discrimination, racism, and inequality they personally witnessed, endured, and overcame in order to give their families a better future. From politicians to academicians, from historians to musicians, from artists to activists, they have blazed a remarkable path for us.

In a world where technology is replacing almost every aspect of human life — where phones have replaced real conversations, where time is so hurried, where kindness is a rarity -– let’s stop for a moment to pay our respect to our elders.  It’s time to hear their stories and embrace the important lessons they can share. It’s time to say a big “Thank you!” Positively Filipino will continue to tell the stories of the manongs and manangs, lest we forget. – Publisher & Staff.

Read the life stories of Belinda A. Aquino and Ben Cayetano, former Governor of Hawaiʻi, from the article published by Positively Filipino. A video of this event called “Building Communities” by the same host is also aired in Tribute to our Manongs and Manangs.

Featured in Hawaii Business Magazine, February 21, 2024 are UH members Dr. Patricia Halagao and daughter Marissa (top middle), and Agnes Malate (bottom middle) for their achievements as Filipinos in Hawaiʻi. Patricia Halagao, an educator for more than a decade, has worked on getting more Filipinos into higher education and more educational opportunities for Filipino students.  As the chair of curriculum studies at UH Mānoa’s College of Education, she has advocated for equality and fairness by increasing the number of Filipinos and other underrepresented groups in college and pursuing careers in higher education. While she was on the state Board of Education, she pushed for the development of policies on multilingualism and for the Seal of Biliteracy, which is now awarded upon graduation to students who demonstrate high proficiency in both of the state’s two official languages (English and Hawaiian), or in either of those two and at least one additional language.

Read their stories at Hawaiʻi’s Filipinos Are Stepping Out From the Shadows.

The University of the Philippines Alumni Association of Hawaiʻi bestows the UP-Legacy Award for Lifetime Achievements on Dr. Raymund Llanes Liongson. Dr. Liongson (retired) was a professor of Arts and Humanities at the UH Leeward Community College. He taught Philippine Studies, among many subjects, and has been very active in community organization work and advocacy for the betterment of Filipinos in Hawaiʻi.

UPAAH describes his exemplary vita as follows: 𝑫𝒓. 𝑳𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒈𝒔𝒐𝒏 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒒𝒖𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒂𝒍 𝒆𝒙𝒂𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒂𝒍𝒖𝒎𝒏𝒊 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑼𝒏𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑷𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒊𝒑𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒔 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒐𝒅𝒚—𝒖𝒑𝒉𝒐𝒍𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒄𝒉𝒐𝒐𝒍’𝒔 𝒎𝒐𝒕𝒕𝒐 𝒐𝒇 𝒉𝒐𝒏𝒐𝒓 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒆𝒙𝒄𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆. 𝑯𝒆 𝒂𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒗𝒐𝒊𝒄𝒆𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒗𝒐𝒊𝒄𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒔,…

Dr. Jayson Parba earned his PhD in Second Language Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa (UHM). He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Indo-Pacific Languages & Literatures at UHM where he also serves as the Coordinator of the Philippine Language and Culture Program. He is a multilingual educator and scholar whose research interests include critical language pedagogy, heritage language education, language ideologies, multilingualism, and translanguaging. In particular, he is interested in critically examining how language use and language education can challenge or sustain social inequities, status quo discourses, and linguistic and cultural discrimination. He has published in the International Journal of Multilingualism, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, Linguistics and Education, TESOL Quarterly, and in edited volumes published by Routledge and Springer, among others. More…

Congratulations, Dean Antonio Domingo, for your two awards in 2025! First, as Outstanding Faculty during the Pamantasan Manoa, and secondly, the Presidential Citation for Meritorious Teaching Award.

Dean is the Coordinator and an Instructor in the Ilokano Program at UH Mānoa. Alongside those roles, he serves as an Academic Adviser for the BA in Philippine Language and Culture (Ilokano), Minor, and Certificate and faculty adviser for the Timpuyog Organization, a student run organization. In the community, he is the President for NAKEM (National Alliance for Knowledge, Empowerment and Meaning) Hawai’i and Secretary for HALT (Hawai’i Association of Language Teachers).

He received the “2025 Dr. Ernest “Niki” Librarios, Jr. Outstanding Filipina/o Faculty and Staff Award” during the Pamantasan Conference: Rooted & Rising on February 28, 2025, at UH Campus Center Ballroom. The award recognizes individuals who have contributed significantly to the success of Filipinas/os in Education through mentoring, leadership, and support.

Dean also received the Presidential Citation for Meritorious Teaching Award during the 2025 UH Mānoa Awards Ceremony on April 28, 2025, at the Kennedy Theatre. Please follow this link: Dean Domingo – Center for Philippine Studies.

Meet Uriel Galace, a PhD Candidate at Duke University, and the recipient of the Writing Excellence Award at the 2025 SPAS Graduate Student Conference hosted by the UH Department of Asian Studies. His paper, The Differential Impact of Colonization Within Countries: Evidence from the Philippines, provides novel empirical evidence showing how variation in Spanish colonial institutions helped shape political and economic outcomes across regions. His work highlights the complicated legacies of colonization and the need to assess its divergent impacts to better understand its long-term consequences. 

Paul Gabriel L. Cosme is a doctoral student of composition at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. His latest work, “‘Sorry, Goodbye…evermore?’: Beyond Taylor Swift and Mimicry in Moira dela Torre and Philippine Popular Music” is published with Musika Jornal at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. As a composer, Paul puts in dialogue Asian and Western traditions with artists including the Grammy-winning New Jersey Symphony, taiko master Kenny Endo, kulintang player Ron Querian, and the JACK Quartet.

Veronica Alporha or Vec is a doctoral candidate at the Department of History. Her dissertation project, “Worthy Feelings: An emotional history of work in the Philippines, 1900-1935,” examines the emotional and affective lives of Filipino workers employed in different economic sectors in the US Empire in the early 20th century. Vec is the recipient of the Belinda A. Aquino International Philippine Studies Endowment for 2025. This endowment will partially fund her library and archival research trips in different libraries in the Philippines and the continental United States.

Haruka Kei Waseda is an M.A. student in Asian Studies (’24) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, specializing in the Philippines. She is a recipient of the Belinda Aquino Endowment, which supports her upcoming research titled “Examining Transnational Ilokano Nikkei-jin/Diaspora in Japan and their Impact on the Ilocos Region. Her research explores the experiences of transnational Ilokano Nikkei-jin (Japanese descendants)/diaspora in Japan and their influences on Ilocos.

Kaelyn Howard is an MA student in Ethnomusicology at UH Mānoa. Her research focuses on Philippine folk and art song traditions, and as a classical singer she prioritizes Philippine art songs and African American spirituals. Kaelyn received the Corky Trinidad Endowment for a collaborative concert project between the Center of Philippine Studies and Department of Music in October 2025. The program Art Songs of the Philippines celebrates Philippine vocal music, presenting a variety of repertoire written by past and present Filipino composers.

Louward Allen Zubiri, PhD Linguistics ’24 from UH Mānoa, was awarded the Alfonso Yuchengco Endowment Fund to partially support his dissertation fieldwork in the Philippines during the Summer of 2023. In addition to his completed dissertation (ProQuest Publication No. 31491135), another output derived from his dissertation research is an article on Assessing Intergenerational Transmission of Bikol. In 2024, he also received an Excellence in Research Award from UH for his work on the Bikol language.

Jensen Villaflor, who has a BA in American Studies and a minor in Filipino Language and Culture, is a member of the Honors Program. Her approved project is titled “Kain na Tayo: Food Memory and the Creation of the Filipino Self,” funded by the Corky Trinidad Scholarship.

Jensen had also received a scholarship grant from the Philippine Consulate General of Honolulu-Senator Loren Legarda donation.

Emmanuel Jones Mante, MFA student, obtained a Corky Trinidad scholarship grant for his research on Mactan, Cebu entitled “Kadaugan sa Mactan Reenactment: Performing History and the April 27, 1521 Memory of Resistance.”

The award will enable him to do fieldwork in Cebu to retrace the Battle of Mactan involving the local hero, Lapu-Lapu, pitted against the Spanish soldiers under Ferdinand Magellan.

Adrian Alarilla says: “The Corky Trinidad Endowment Scholarship was a boon for me and my dissertation. I am fortunate that I received it at the right time (in between COVID-19 waves) and I was able to do my fieldwork with relative freedom.”

From his research, Adrian published an article, “Unsettling Islands: Philippine Cinema, Migration and Settler Colonialism,” in the Journal of Philippine Cinema, Vol. 6 (2021).

Jake Atienza, MA Sociology 2023, conducted his fieldwork in Cebu to research the consequences of mining. His project was made possible by the Corky Trinidad Endowment Scholarship. The report is now available in Summary. He also published an article in the Victoria University of Wellington’s Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific, 2024. A video of his lecture is found Here. Jake is a PhD student majoring in Global Studies at the University of California-Irving.