Dr.
wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin
rosa.castillo(at)oeaw.ac.at
+ 43 1 51581 - 6485
Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo is a socio-cultural and public anthropologist and curator working on peace and (post)conflict dynamics through interdisciplinary research, teaching, and multimedia knowledge transfer, guided by feminist, intersectional, post- and decolonial, and Indigenous approaches. Bridging academic, artistic, policy, and community engaged practices, her research addresses key themes of memory studies, transitional justice, indigenous rights, environmental issues, media and politics, ethics, and decoloniality.
She has published extensively on these topics in academic journals like Medical Anthropology, Social Analysis, Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, and Critical Asian Studies, edited volumes, and non-academic platforms such as Rappler. She further coedited the book Thinking with the South: Reframing Research Collaboration Amid Decolonial Imperatives and Challenges (2023, DeGruyter) and the double special issue Negotiating Research Ethics in Volatile Contexts (2022 and 2023, International Quarterly for Asian Studies). Her monograph, Being and Becoming: Memory, Imagination and Violence in Muslim Mindanao, will be published in 2027 by Rutgers University Press. Based on her PhD dissertation at Freie Universität Berlin, which received a summa cum laude distinction, the book explores the productive force of imagination, entwined with memory, emotions, and temporality in individual and collective becoming amidst a backdrop of coloniality, Islamophobia, political turmoil, and the Bangsamoro struggle for the right to selfdetermination.
Seeking to foster tangible impact and nurture meaningful dialogue within and beyond academia, Rosa created and curated the Philippine Studies Series Berlin, a platform for lectures, discussions, and art and film events centered on the Philippines, Filipina/o/x, and the diaspora. She furthermore established and ran the first Philippine Studies Program in Germany at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin’s Institute for Asian and African Studies where
she also co-founded the Negotiating Research Ethics initiative. She served as one of the principal investigators of Co2Libri - Conceptual Collaboration: Living Borderless Research Interaction, funded by the Berlin University Alliance, and co-project leader of the "Affect and Colonialism Web Lab," recipient of the Ideas Competition for International Research Marketing Prize of the German Research Foundation. The Web Lab is based at and cofunded by the Collaborative Research Center Affective Societies, Freie Universität Berlin.
Before joining ISA, Rosa held temporary professorship positions at Freie Universität Berlin, the University of Bremen, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the University of the Philippines. She also previously worked as a curator at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and as an indigenous rights advocate with the NGO Anthropology Watch. She is concurrently a Research Fellow at the Institute for Health and Social Sciences at the University of South
Africa.
At ISA, Rosa will investigate both historical and contemporary entanglements between mining companies, Indigenous peoples, and more-than-human beings in Palawan, Philippines as a postdoc in the ERC project Resource spirits: An interactionist approach to animism and extractivism in Southeast Asia
• Castillo, Rosa Cordillera. Forthcoming 2027. Being and Becoming: Imagination, Memory, and Violence in Muslim Mindanao. Rutgers University Press.
• Fleschenberg, Andrea, Kai Kresse, and Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo (editors). 2023. Thinking with the South: Reframing Research Collaboration Amid Decolonial Imperatives and Challenges. Berlin: DeGruyter (book)
• Bano, Abida, Rosa Cordillera Castillo, Andrea Fleschenberg, and Sarah Holz (editors). 2023. "Negotiating Research Ethics in Volatile Contexts." International Quarterly of Asian Studies, 54(1). (double special issue)
• Bano, Abida, Rosa Cordillera Castillo, Andrea Fleschenberg, and Sarah Holz (editors). 2022. "Negotiating Research Ethics in Volatile Contexts." International Quarterly of Asian Studies, 53(4). (double special issue)
• Fleschenberg, Andrea, Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo, and Kai Kresse. 2023. Introduction: Reframing, Re-enacting Research and Collaboration. In Thinking with the South: Reframing Research Collaboration Amid Decolonial Imperatives and Challenges, Fleschenberg, Kresse, and Castillo (eds). Berlin: DeGruyter (book chapter)
• Castillo, Rosa Cordillera, Antony Pattathu and June Rubis. 2023. Critical research ethics as decolonial praxis. Debating section. International Quarterly of Asian Studies 54(1) https://doi.org/10.11588/iqas.2023.1.21746. (article in journal)
• Castillo, Rosa Cordillera and Raffy Lerma. 2023. “Regime-made disaster in Metro Manila: Beyond an aesthetics reading of photographs of Duterte’s 'drug war'.” In Beauty and Brutality: Manila and Its Global Discontents, Martin Manalansan IV, Robert G. Diaz, and Rolando B. Tolentino, editors. Pennsylvania: Temple University Press (book chapter)
• Fleschenberg, Andrea and Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo. 2022. "Negotiating Research Ethics in Volatile Contexts." International Quarterly of Asian Studies, 53(4): 495-503. (article in journal)
• Castillo, Rosa Cordillera. 2022. "The past, present, and future entangled: Memorywork as decolonial praxis." In The Decolonial Enactments of Community Psychology, Shose Kessi, Shahnaaz Suffla, and Mohammed Seedat, editors. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International. (book chapter)
• Yambao, Clod Marlan Krister, Sarah, Wright, Noah Theriault, and Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo. 2022. “I am the land and I am their witness”: placemaking amid displacement among Lumads in the Philippines. Critical Asian Studies, 54(2): 259-281. DOI: 10.1080/14672715.2022.2059771 (article in journal)
• Castillo, Rosa Cordillera. 2022. "A politics and ethics of viewing photographs of Duterte's 'drug war:' Towards reconceptualizing the political community," Akda: Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, and Performance, 1(2): 54-70. (article in journal)
• Castillo, Rosa Cordillera. 2021. "When Facebook is the Internet: A halfie anthropologist grapples with evolving social media connectivity," Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology, 65(1): 143-150. (article in journal)
• Castillo, Rosa Cordillera. 2018. “Unpacking 'youth' and 'religiosity' in J. Cornelio's Being Catholic.” Journal of World Christianity, Vol. 8, No. 2. DOI: 10.5325/jworlchri.8.2.0165 (article in journal)
• Castillo, Rosa Cordillera. 2018. “Subverting ‘formalized’ ethics through mainstreaming critical research ethics and a responsive review process.” Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 26:3. (article in journal)
• Castillo, Rosa Cordillera. 2015. “The emotional, political, and analytical labor of engaged anthropology amidst violent political conflict.” Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness, Vol. 34(1). (article in journal)
• Castillo, Rosa Cordillera and Fatima Alvarez-Castillo. 2009. “The law is not enough: free and prior informed consent issues raised by the mining of Philippine indigenous peoples’ lands; with insights from the San-hoodia case.” In Indigenous Peoples, Consent and Benefit Sharing: Lessons from the San-Hoodia Case, Wynberg R, Vermeylen S, Chennels R., editors. South Africa: Springer. (book chapter)
