GRANTS
The Virginia A. Miralao Excellence
in Research Award
The Virginia A. Miralao Excellence in Research Award
In 2010, Dr. Belinda Aquino, professor emerita at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, donated USD 5,000 to the Philippine Social Science Council (PSSC) to establish the Virginia A. Miralao (VAM) Fund. The Fund aims to honor the invaluable contributions of former PSSC Executive Director, Dr. Virginia Miralao, to the development of social sciences in the Philippines and her own sterling record of scholarship.
The Fund is intended to serve as an incentive for young social scientists to pursue original and meaningful research. In line with this, PSSC launched the VAM Excellence in Research Award in 2012. The Award provides a yearly cash prize for the best article in a social science journal, book chapter, or book written by a promising young scholar in the profession. The awardee also receives a statuette especially designed by noted Filipino artist Toym Imao.
NOMINATION PROCEDURES
1. The following documents must be submitted by the nominating organization to the PSSC Secretariat:
Accomplished nomination form
- Copy of the published journal article, book chapter, or book
- Copy of the nominee’s CV
2. All documents must be emailed to grants@pssc.org.ph and submitted to the Secretariat office no later than November 30 of every year:
- VAM Excellence in Research Award Secretariat
Philippine Social Science Council
PSSCenter, Commonwealth Avenue
Diliman, Quezon City
3. The award will be conferred during the PSSC Annual General Assembly.
To nominate, please fill in the VAM Nomination Form
Who is Virginia A. Miralao?
Dr. Miralao was the Executive Director of the PSSC from 1996 to 2009. During her term, the Council’s assets and resources expanded and PSSC’s involvement in research and publications, training, organizing conferences, and administering project grants and scholarships became more visible. She also strengthened PSSC’s linkages with regional and international social science entities, including the Social and Human Sciences Sector of UNESCO. After retiring from PSSC, Dr. Miralao assumed the post of secretary-general of the Philippines National Commission for UNESCO from 2011 to 2016.
Early in her career, Dr. Miralao taught at the University of the East and the University of the Philippines. She moved to the Ateneo de Manila University in 1971 where she became associate professor of Sociology, and research associate and chief of operations of Ateneo’s Institute of Philippine Culture. She transferred to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation in 1983 where she headed the foundation’s Research Group until 1988.
A committed researcher throughout her career, Dr. Miralao designed and carried out research in various fields: population and women’s studies; family and the youth; agrarian reform and rural development; education policy and curriculum reform; and transnational migration. She has authored and edited numerous publications, articles, and academic pieces based on her studies and research. She was conferred the UP Alumni Association’s Outstanding Professional Award in the Social Sciences in 2007; and the Mariang Maya Award by the UP Sigma Delta Phi Sorority as Outstanding Achiever in Social Research in 2008.
Dr. Miralao earned her PhD in Sociology from Cornell University on a Fulbright grant, and her BA and MA degrees from the University of the Philippines.
Virginia A. Miralao Excellence in Research Awardees (2013 – 2022)
2013 - MARCO STEFAN B. LAGMAN
Department of Geography
University of the Philippines
PSSC Institutional Affiliation: Philippine National Historical Society
(2012). Agricultural and urban land as property and resource in 19th century Pampanga. The Journal of History, Vol. 58, pp. 18-41.
The article ingeniously uses archival notarial records and urban land tax documents to examine how land properties were regarded, used, measured and acquired by Kapampangans and regulated by Spanish authorities in the 19th century.
2014 - LISANDRO E. CLAUDIO
Department of Literature
De La Salle University
PSSC Institutional Affiliation: Philippine Sociological Society (2013).
Taming people’s power: The EDSA revolutions and their contradictions. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
The book masterfully unravels the intersecting and competing narratives about People Power, which the author contends impinge on our collective memory and continue to shape and impact on contemporary Philippine politics.
2015 - JAYEEL S. CORNELIO
Development Studies Program
Ateneo de Manila University
PSSC Institutional Affiliation: Philippine Sociological Society
(2014). Popular religion and the turn to everyday authenticity: Reflections on the contemporary study of Philippine catholicism. Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, Vol. 62, pp. 471-500.
The article presents an excellent discussion of the trajectory of scholarship on popular religion since the seminal work of Fr. Jaime Bulatao, S.J., on Philippine split-level Christianity.
2016 - JONATHAN C. ONG
Department of Communication
University of Massachusetts-Amherst
PSSC Institutional Affiliation: Philippine Sociological Society
(2015). The poverty of television: The mediation of suffering in class-divided Philippines. London: Anthem Press.
The book renders a brilliant analysis of the portrayal of suffering in Philippine television and the responses of Filipino audiences to mediated suffering based on their class positions.
2017 - ARNISSON ANDRE C. ORTEGA
Population Institute
University of the Philippines
PSSC Institutional Affiliation: Philippine Geographical Society UP Population Institute
(2016). Neoliberalizing spaces in the Philippines: Suburbanization, transnational migration, and dispossession. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
The book presents an innovative take on several national and global contemporaneous events and how these are disrupting land use and ownership patterns in ways that advance neoliberal tendencies in Philippine development.
2018 - KRISTIAN KARLO C. SAGUIN
Department of Geography
University of the Philippines
PSSC Institutional Affiliation: Philippine Geographical Society
(2017). Producing an urban hazardscape beyond the city. Environment and Planning A, Vol. 49, pp. 1968-1985.
The article makes a profound contribution to research on disaster risk reduction by analyzing the connection between current-day flooding problems in Metro Manila and the history of flood control and environmental. change in Laguna Lake.
2019 - KRISTOFFER B. BERSE
National College of Public Administration and Governance
University of the Philippines
PSSC Institutional Affiliation: Philippine Society for Public Administration
(2018). Cities as aid agencies: Preliminary prospects and cautionary signposts from post-disaster inter-urban cooperation in Asia. In M.A. Miller, M. Douglass, and M. Garschagen (eds.), Crossing borders: Governing environmental disasters in a global urban age in Asia and the Pacific. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore Pte. Ltd.
The chapter critically analyzes cross-national aid cooperation at the level of LGUs, focusing especially on affected local areas and the responses of other cities that have been or may be similarly impacted by disasters.
2021 - GEORGE EMMANUEL R. BORRINAGA
University of San Carlos
PSSC Institutional Affiliation: Philippine National Historical Society
(2020). José Rizal in the emotional landscape of Samar and Leyte at the turn of the 20th century. The Journal of History, 66, 213-278.
The article contributes new knowledge on the Philippines' struggle against Spanish and early American colonial rule, particularly on how this struggle and an accompanying sense of nationalism spread through the islands via Rizal's martyrdom. The unique presentation of analyzing local developments through popular songs and poems during the revolutionary period lends credence to the rise of nationalist fervor or of Philippine nationalism beyond the confines of Manila and the Tagalog-speaking regions. It traverses beyond the country's educated elite who could read Rizal's writing.
2020 - NICOLE C. CURATO
University of Canberra
PSSC Institutional Affiliation: Philippine Sociological Society
(2019). Democracy in a time of misery: From spectacular tragedies to deliberative action. Oxford University Press.
Drawing from deliberative democratic action and normative media studies, the book unpacks the varying modes of how political agents articulate, enact, and contest their spectacular tragedies to deliberative action. It is profound and remarkable contribution to understanding people’s misery enlivening democratic action.
2022 - PAUL GIDEON D. LASCO
University of San Carlos
PSSC Institutional Affiliation: Ugnayang Pang-Agham Tao (UGAT)
(2021). Living together in precarious times: COVID-19 in the Philippines. In L. Manderson, N. J. Burke, & A. Wahlberg (Eds.), Viral Loads (pp. 427–442). UCL Press.
The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the necessity—for social scientists and the rest of the public alike—of an ecological; non-anthropocentric view of the world as humans grapple with microbes; surround themselves with plants; and engage with non-human animals in ways that range from abuse to affection. This chapter uses this multispecies perspective to reflect on the Philippine experience of COVID-19; offering illustrative examples; sketching tentative insights; and concluding with a research agenda for future work.
