The Team
Principal Investigators
Maria Cristina Martinez Juan
Dr. Maria Cristina Martinez-Juan is a scholar and curator specializing in transnational Philippine cultural studies, digital and material repatriation, and Indigenous knowledge systems. She is a faculty member of the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at SOAS, University of London, where she founded and leads Philippine Studies at SOAS, the first academic program of its kind in Europe. She also chairs the SOAS-wide network on Provenance, Accessibility, Repatriation, and Restitution (PARR) and serves on the editorial boards of South East Asia Research and the Journal of Social Science Research.
Dr. Juan is Principal Investigator of multiple AHRC-funded initiatives, including a project on decolonizing Southeast Asian sound archives. She also leads Mapping Philippine Material Culture a global digital inventory of Philippine objects held in international collections. Her source-centered approach has fostered enduring relationships with Indigenous communities such as the Tboli, Bagobo, Blaan, and Ifugao.
Her editorial work includes three special issues of South East Asia Research: Representing the Philippine Cordillera (2020), Kaagi: Tracing Visayan Identities through Cultural Texts (2021), and Mindanao: Cartographies of History, Identity and Representation (2022). She also publishes widely on repatriation, provenance research, and decolonial curatorial practice. Dr. Juan holds a PhD and MA in Comparative Literature from the University of the Philippines and an MA in Museum Heritage and Material Culture Studies from SOAS. Her work champions ethical, community-engaged approaches to reconnecting displaced heritage with its cultural origins.
Project Role:
Dr. Cristina Martinez-Juan serves as the Principal Investigator for the project in the United Kingdom. Her role is to identify and manage the aggregation of the baseline archival corpus, research on historical contexts as well as supervise its conversion into IIIF ready images. Using metadata from the various owning institutions, she will design the information architecture for the creation of the digital reconstruction of the library, as well as create the interface for the publication of analyses, exhibits and crowd-sourcing tools. She will also co-plan and co-organize with the US team, the initial conference/workshop set to initiate the project and the final conference in which the project will be showcased for an interdisciplinary and international public.
Christina H. Lee
Christina H. Lee is Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Acting Chair of the Humanities Council at Princeton University (2025-2026). She is also a member of the Center for Culture, Society, and Religion’s Executive Committee, an associated faculty member in the Program of Indigenous Studies, Latin American Studies, and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. Professor Christina Lee also serves in the Faculty Advisory Board of the Emma Bloomberg Center for Access and Opportunity.
Christina Lee’s research focuses on the literary, social, and cultural productions of Iberian Spain and the Spanish Transpacific during the early modern period. She has published eight books. Among them, Saints of Resistance: Devotions in the Philippines under Early Spanish Rule (Oxford University Press, 2021), The Anxiety of Sameness in Early Modern Spain (Manchester University Press, 2015, 2018), The Routledge Companion to Race in Early Modern Artistic, Material, and Visual Production with Nicholas Jones and Dominique Polanco, The Spanish Pacific, 1521-1815: A Reader of Primary Sources, Volume 1 (Amsterdam University Press, 2020) and Volume 2 (Amsterdam University Press, 2024) with Ricardo Padrón, Western Visions of the Far East in a Transpacific Age (Routledge, 2012, 2017), Reading and Writing Subjects in Medieval and Golden Age Spain (Juan de la Cuesta, 2016) with José Luis Gastañaga, and the Spanish edition of Lope de Vega’s Los mártires de Japón (Juan de la Cuesta, 2006).
Christina Lee is also the co-editor, with Julia Schleck, of the global history book series Connected Histories in the Early Modern World.
Project Role:
Dr. Christina H. Lee is the NEH Project Director. Dr. Lee leads the production of the transcriptions and translations of the extant handwritten manuscripts that belonged in the Convent of San Pablo/San Agustin prior to the British occupation. To this end, she has assembled a team of scholars in the United States and in the Philippines. In the United States, she is working with Ph.D. students at Princeton whose work focuses on the Spanish Pacific. In the Philippines, she is mentoring, and training emerging scholars to read and transcribe the contents of the archive, thanks to a subcontract with the History Department of the University of the Philippines and co-directorship of their faculty.
The Team
Ian Christopher Alfonso
Ian is an Assistant Professor at the Department of History, University of the Philippines Diliman. He obtained his MA History and PhD History degrees from the same university. He is also a board member of the Philippine Historical Association.
Francisca Bridget Bico
Bridget is a BA Anthropology graduate from UP Diliman. She conducted her fieldwork in Banton, focusing on folk Catholicism. She currently works as a research assistant on 17th–18th century manuscripts about the Spanish Philippines.
Joseph Castro
Born and raised in Santa Rita, Pampanga, Joseph graduated from the Ateneo de Manila University before immigrating to the United States. An attorney by trade, he is based in Washington, DC. He writes and reads in his free time.
Argene Clasara
Argene Águila Clasara is a Filipino Catholic missionary in Macau. He finished his Master's in History and Heritage Studies at the University of Saint Joseph (Macau) and his AB in History at the University of Santo Tomás, Manila.
John Carlos Duque
John Carlos Duque, is a Teaching Associate and MA History student at UP Department of History, researches mobility and migration—focusing on migrant networks in the early modern Philippines and their transnational ties across East and Southeast Asia.
Cheek Fadriquela
Cheek Fadriquela obtained his PhD in Forestry: Wood Science and Technology at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, with specialization in cultural heritage conservation. His work entitled “Kahoy: Wood in the Philippines” was a 2014 National Book Award finalist.
Yangyou Fang
Yangyou Fang holds a Ph.D. in Spanish from Princeton University. She studies Asian diasporas under Spanish colonialism, focusing on intellectual and religious agency. Her work appears in the Spanish Pacific Reader, and Routledge Companion to Race.
Jeraiah Gray
Jeraiah is a Teaching Associate of the MA History (Ethnohistory and Local History) program at the University of the Philippines Baguio. Her research interest is Southeast Asian upland urbanization from the 19th to the 20th centuries.
Regalado Jose
Regalado Trota José has researched, written, mentored and promoted Philippine cultural heritage on several fronts for more than 50 years. In July 2024, Mr. Jose was elected Chairperson of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines.
You-Jin Kim
You-Jin Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University. Her research examines how various women in the Spanish Pacific negotiated for their agency during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Margaret Mascariñas
Margaret Mascariñas is a BA European Languages student at UP Diliman, specializing in Spanish and French. Her research interests include translation, multilingualism, and Hispanofilipino literature.
Caio Mathias Vaz Pereira
Caio Mathias Vaz Pereira is a PhD student in the history department at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of Colonial Latin America, with a focus on the history of capitalism, slavery, and comparative perspectives.
Fame Mendoza
Fame completed her Bachelor of Arts in European Languages at the University of the Philippines Diliman.
Moises Levi Orlino
Moises Levi Orlino is a Teaching Associate and graduate student at the UP Department of History. His research focuses on 17th-century Philippine military history, particularly the role of indio soldiers as agents of colonial power and Spanish expansion.
Rona Repancol
Rona, teaches history at the University of Santo Tomás. She joins archaeological explorations while working on her PhD in Archaeology degree at the University of the Philippines, specializing on fortifications, and historical archaeology.
Joaquin Manuel Reyes
Joaquin Manuel Reyes is a student at the University of the Philippines Diliman. His interests include Filipino history through the lens of the humanities and literature, the Inquisition in New Spain, and colonial linguistics for Filipino languages.
David Rivera
David Rivera is a doctoral candidate in the department of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University. He researches religious practice, place, and space in Early Modern Mexico, the Philippines, and Japan under Iberian rule and influence.
Jan Cherome Sison
Jan Cherome Sison is currently pursuing her Juris Doctor degree at the UP College of Law while working at the Manila Observatory and the La Viña Zarate law firm. She graduated magna cum laude from the Department of History, UP Diliman in 2023.
Javier Leonardo Rugeria
Javier Leonardo V. Rugeria is senior lecturer at the Departamento ng Filipino at Panitikan ng Pilipinas, College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines Diliman. He is also chief editor of Saysay: The Journal of Bikol History.
Charlene Manese
Charlene obtained her master's degree in archaeology and heritage from the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, and graduate diploma in archaeology from the University of the Philippines Diliman-Archaeological Studies Program.
Nicholas Sy
Nicholas Sy is assistant professor, Department of History, University of the Philippines. On leave, he is writing his dissertation at Radboud University Nijmegen—approaching indigenous constructions of colonial enslavement culturally and demographically.
Carlos Joaquin Tabalon
Carlos is ateaching Associate and concurrent Master of Arts History student in the Department of History, University of the Philippines Diliman. He is Interested in transport and mobility history, history of public works, urban history
Chiara Martinez
Chiara is a history teacher at Child Learning Foundation in Cebu. She holds a BS in Biology from Cebu Doctors’ University and a CPE from St. Theresa’s College. She is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in History.
Research Partner Institutions
The Lilly Library, Indiana University
As the repository of the majority of the dispersed San Agustin library collection that has been identified by the research proponents, the Lilly Library is an active participant and partner in this project. As agreed, the Library will
- Scan its original documents, and produce more than 8000 images from the manuscripts identified by the proponents, at a IIIF adaptable resolution.
- Make these high-resolution scans available to the proponents for conversion into IIIF and allow them to make these images available from an external server.
- Provide access and share the metadata available in the Lilly Library’s special collections catalogue and internal databases.
- Administer the additional grants to supplement the Lilly’s short term fellowships with a specific study of the Philippine manuscripts.
- Participate in relevant project meetings, events and workshops and act in an advisory capacity for the project's progress.
Princeton University Library
Princeton University Library is the main library system of Princeton University. With holdings of more than 7 million books, 6 million microforms, and 48,000 linear feet of manuscripts, it is among the largest libraries in the world by number of volumes. For the 1762 Archive, it has served as the main repository for high resolution, IIIF scans institutions without such hosting capabilities and provided guidance for digital archiving including workshops for metadata creation.
San Agustin Museum Library, Manila
The San Agustin Church is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was built as it now stands in 1587. The monastery just adjacent to the church, was turned into a Museum in 1973 and continues to have the famous Biblioteca on the second floor. The San Agustin library has some remaining manuscripts from the period - but many of them have not been catalogued or digitized. As an institutional partner for this project the library will provide full access to researchers to study the remaining manuscripts and materials in the Library. It will also give access and share any photos or documentation about the library that may help in the digital reconstruction of the Library’s contents and also its history.
The Lopez Library, Manila
Lopez Museum and Library (LML) is the Philippines’ oldest privately owned and publicly accessible museum and library. In keeping with the vision of its founder, Eugenio Lopez, Sr., LML continues to be a key cultural and historical resource for Philippine arts and letters with a collection that spans 600 years through rare books, manuscripts, periodicals, maps, archives, precolonial potter, and 19th century to contemporary art. as an Associate Partner, the library will a) Scan approximately 1,500 leaves from the rare books identified by the proponents at an IIIF adaptable resolution b) Make these high-resolution scans available to the proponents for conversion into IIIF and allow them to serve up the images from an external server for academic research, c) Give access and share the relevant metadata available in LML’s database to facilitate academic research
SOAS Library
SOAS University of London was founded in 1916 to advance British scholarship and administrative knowledge of Asia and Africa. In the early 1920s, key parts of William Marsden’s King’s College manuscript collection were transferred to the newly established School. Among these are three early works on Philippine languages: a Vocabulario by Alonso Méntrida; Arte de la Lengua Tagala, a Tagalog grammar and vocabulary dated circa 1636; and Arte de la lengua Pampanga, a grammar of the Kapampangan language.
The British Library
The British Library holds materials linked to the British occupation of Manila, including East India Company papers and royal charts. Only one item can be definitively traced to the San Agustin Monastery: the Libros de Consultas (1751–1761), the chapter book of the Convent of San Pablo. A note by Captain Hyde Parker confirms that it was taken during the British capture of Manila and later acquired by Alexander Dalrymple.
Foyle Special Collections, King’s College
The Foyle Special Collections Library at King’s College London holds seven grammars and lexicons of Philippine languages, originally acquired in Manila by Alexander Dalrymple during the British occupation (1762–64). Comprising four manuscripts (two unpublished) and annotated printed editions, the dictionaries were later lent and bequeathed to William Marsden, a pioneering orientalist and linguist. A printed label pasted over Dalrymple’s bookplate reads “Afterwards bequeathed to me,” confirming the transfer. In 1835, Marsden donated his entire library—including these dictionaries—to the newly founded King’s College London.
Department of History, the University of the Philippines, Diliman
The UP Department of History belongs to the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy. It was founded on 3 June 1910 and is considered to be one of the oldest history departments in the country. Since 1915, the department has offered graduate courses for students taking further studies under the Master of Arts program. The Department has identified two of its Faculty members to take the lead in the collaboration between 1762 archive project and the History Department of UP. This collaboration will focus on transcribing the identified manuscripts from the 1762 archive.
