[Picture]
Taken during my last paper presentation for the PSS International Conference 2025 in Davao City, Philippines
💡
A year of transition has reshaped how I hold trust, care, and responsibility in scholarship — clarifying both the intellectual direction of my work and my commitment to kinder, more dignified academic spaces.
The past year has been one of transition. Some of these changes have been deeply affirming, others quietly difficult, and many simply asked me to hold space for ambiguity. In the middle of it all, I found myself returning to the very questions my work tries to name: What does it mean to sustain trust, act with care, and carry responsibility in a world where the ground is often moving?
Professionally, this year marked a period of consolidation and stretching. I continued the work I care about most — thinking with others about trust, scandal, legitimacy, and democratic life in the Global South — while also taking on roles that asked me to be more intentional about stewardship and community. Serving emerging scholars, building interdisciplinary networks, and working across institutions have all reminded me that scholarship is never simply about ideas. It is also about the moral labour of building spaces where people feel seen, where difference is not a threat, and where critique and care can sit together without canceling each other out.
It was also a year of learning to honour my limits. As a neurodivergent academic, I live with a mind that is both deeply attentive and sometimes unruly. ADHD does not disappear when professional expectations rise — if anything, it becomes more present. I have had to revise timelines, renegotiate energy, and practice the difficult task of not equating productivity with worth. These are not private matters to me. They continue to shape how I teach, supervise, and mentor — not from a position of perfection, but from a commitment to dignity, slowness, and relational ethics in academic life.
There were joys too: seeing long-term projects move forward, deepening collaborations across Southeast Asia, and witnessing the quiet courage of colleagues and students navigating their own complex worlds. I am reminded that scholarship is not a solitary achievement but a collective craft, and that the Global South is not simply a site of study — it is a living intellectual project, full of creativity, contradictions, and moral struggle.
Moving forward, I want my work to be both clearer and kinder. Clearer in the sense of sharpening the conceptual threads I have been weaving — around trust cultures, scandal, relational sovereignty, and moral order. Kinder in the sense of building spaces, classrooms, networks, and texts that do not lose sight of the human cost of crisis, precarity, and institutional failure.
If this year has taught me anything, it is that democratic life depends not only on systems and structures, but on the everyday moral labour of coordination, repair, and listening. My hope is that the next phase of my research — and the communities I am privileged to be part of — can continue to hold that truth with care.
Thank you for reading, walking alongside, questioning generously, and trusting imperfectly — as we all do. The work continues, and so does the learning.
Professionally, this year marked a period of consolidation and stretching. I continued the work I care about most — thinking with others about trust, scandal, legitimacy, and democratic life in the Global South — while also taking on roles that asked me to be more intentional about stewardship and community. Serving emerging scholars, building interdisciplinary networks, and working across institutions have all reminded me that scholarship is never simply about ideas. It is also about the moral labour of building spaces where people feel seen, where difference is not a threat, and where critique and care can sit together without canceling each other out.
It was also a year of learning to honour my limits. As a neurodivergent academic, I live with a mind that is both deeply attentive and sometimes unruly. ADHD does not disappear when professional expectations rise — if anything, it becomes more present. I have had to revise timelines, renegotiate energy, and practice the difficult task of not equating productivity with worth. These are not private matters to me. They continue to shape how I teach, supervise, and mentor — not from a position of perfection, but from a commitment to dignity, slowness, and relational ethics in academic life.
There were joys too: seeing long-term projects move forward, deepening collaborations across Southeast Asia, and witnessing the quiet courage of colleagues and students navigating their own complex worlds. I am reminded that scholarship is not a solitary achievement but a collective craft, and that the Global South is not simply a site of study — it is a living intellectual project, full of creativity, contradictions, and moral struggle.
Moving forward, I want my work to be both clearer and kinder. Clearer in the sense of sharpening the conceptual threads I have been weaving — around trust cultures, scandal, relational sovereignty, and moral order. Kinder in the sense of building spaces, classrooms, networks, and texts that do not lose sight of the human cost of crisis, precarity, and institutional failure.
If this year has taught me anything, it is that democratic life depends not only on systems and structures, but on the everyday moral labour of coordination, repair, and listening. My hope is that the next phase of my research — and the communities I am privileged to be part of — can continue to hold that truth with care.
Thank you for reading, walking alongside, questioning generously, and trusting imperfectly — as we all do. The work continues, and so does the learning.