Introduction of Panel Discussants

12^th Igorot Cordillera BIMAAK-Europe (ICBE) Conference
Salle Dupréel, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Solbosch Campus
Avenue Jeanne 44, 1050 Ixelles, Belgium

May 29-June 1, 2025

Introduction of Panel Discussants
Written by Angelie Marilla and read by Myra Colis (Founding Chairperson, MABIKAs Foundation-The Netherlands)

Panel Discussion – 31 May 2025 – Saturday Morning

*Following our theme on second-generation in the diaspora, our three panelists today are also young speakers. They are young anthropologists and millennials in their early 30s, who pursued their graduate studies in Europe and are now EU-based scholars…

Panelist/Discussant 1: Macario “Macky” Lacbawan is a doctor of social anthropology. He is the author of the book, “Regimes of Contention: Resistance and the Governmentality of Resources in Indigenous Philippines.” His PhD dissertation entitled, "The Burden of Responsibility: Predicaments of Environmental Life in the Caraballo Mountains, Northern Philippines," received the Westinska Prize for the best dissertation awarded by the Royal Society of Humanities at Uppsala University in Sweden. Dr. Macky is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Universität Hamburg in Germany and an “Affiliated Researcher” at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University in Sweden. His current work focuses on the emerging environmental processes and relations that define contemporary experiences of indigeneity. In his previous work, he studied the violent repercussions of dislocation and expulsion of indigenous people from their ancestral land. In his earlier master thesis in cultural sociology, he also wrote about the competing meanings on dog-meat consumption in the Cordillera.

Reactor: Mark Sapaen Watan (Igorot UK Charity)

Panelist/Discussant 2:Abigail “Abi” Mier received her master’s in cultural anthropology and development studies from KU Leuven in Belgium. Her thesis entitled, “Anxious negotiations of being indigenous Igorot in diaspora: (Re)encountering the colonial through critical autoethnography, received the Outstanding Thesis Award from the International Association of Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry. Aside from indigeneity and identity in the diaspora, Abi’s research interest also includes medical anthropology and anthropology of development. She has been involved in discussions and research projects on Inclusive Environments in a (post-) corona context and gender-based responses on community health in the Philippines. She co-authored research articles on gender analysis, especially on the role of women in social innovations in health in the Global South, especially in rural communities in the Philippines. She is currently affiliated with the global health network called Social Innovation in Health Initiative which is hosted at the University of the Philippines Manila.

Reactor: Lorena Clerc (BIBAK Switzerland)

Panelist/Discussant 3: Angelie “Gelai” Marilla is soon-to-be Doctor of Social Anthropology, set to complete her PhD here at the ULB. Her dissertation, entitled "Migrating Things: Contemporary Journeys of Objects in the Igorot Global Village," examines the bidirectional movement of material culture that us, Igorot migrants bring to Europe and those we send back to the Cordillera. Her study aims to contribute to broader debates on new materialism through the lens of migration, consumption, and global flows of people and things. Her PhD research has been awarded a fellowship grant by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS). She has authored a chapter in the "Handbook of Home and Migration" and author of "Mobile Homes, Mobile Objects" in the book on Tangled Mobilities in Asian Migration. Her fieldwork community for her doctorate is the Cordillera Community in Belgium (Cordi-Bel), which has adopted her for the past two years. In her earlier academic training in cultural sociology, she also wrote a master’s thesis on visuality and meaning-making through the circulation of colonial photographs of Igorot-Cordillerans in the National Geographic Magazine.

Reactor: Glenn Palangdan Yamoyam (BIBAAK Barcelona)