Cristina Juan has an MA in Museum, Heritage and Material Culture Studies from SOAS,University of London, and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of the Philippines Diliman. She is a member of the Faculty at the SOAS School of Languages Cultures and Linguistics and is the project head of Philippine Studies at SOAS , an interdisciplinary forum for Philippine-related teaching,research and cultural production in the U.K. She has implemented several digital humanities projects at SOAS, including Digital Filipiniana (2018) and is the Principal Investigator for two AHRC funded projects on Decolonizing South East Asian Sound archives with a focus on BBC broadcasts, and a Digital Reconstruction of the Lost Library of San Pablo as a result of the British Invasion of the Philippines in 1762.
Returning to a place she last lived in 45 years ago, an Englishwoman seeks to hand back, with the help of an academic and a curator, a collection of rare and beautiful objects, photographs, and recordings to the Tboli people of Lake Sebu. Their inspiring odyssey represents a possible framework for how cultural artefacts might be repatriated to the source communities that hold them up in ways beyond the valuations of museums and auction houses.
