Ferth Vandensteen Manaysay
* Corresponding Author
Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, Waseda University
Japan

Ferth Vandensteen L. Manaysay is a graduate student working towards his master’s degree in international relations at the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, Waseda University. Before pursuing graduate studies in Tokyo, he worked in government, media, and non-profit organisations in the Philippines. He is the co-founder and director of the ASEAN Peace Project, a start-up organisation focused on designing and implementing youth-led incubator and leadership programs to support peace-building and environmental protections efforts for conflict-affected communities in Southeast Asia. His research interests include transnational migration, social movements, indigenous and environmental politics, peace and refugee studies, and non-formal education. Ferth’s regional focus is in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia and the Philippines, where he conducted fieldwork about global climate justice norms and local indigenous rights movements with support from Haraguchi Memorial Asia Research Fund under the Waseda University Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies (WIAPS). He is also working on various research projects on the following themes: memory as a source of political opportunity structure for the Philippine ‘comfort women’ movements, the global-local dynamics between indigenous rights and social movements within the Bangsamoro peace process, the framing processes of indigenous schools in Southern Philippines, the transnational religious identity formation of Filipino Catholic migrants in Japan, and the role of comics as an alternative platform for political discourse about the Rohingya refugee crisis. As a graduate research assistant for the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study (WIAS), he has been involved in tracing and documenting how the theory of human capital emerged and developed within the American education system.