Wayne Jopanda

Candidate statement

Wayne Jopanda is a fourth-year Cultural Studies doctoral candidate at UC Davis, researching Filipino student experiences with burn out, trafficked Filipino teachers, and the neoliberal University’s commodification of Filipinos as bodies of labor. Wayne also studies how current Filipino students at U.S. universities respond to these histories of westernized colonial education in the Philippines through community building, collective activisms, and creating spaces of belonging. Wayne is a cofounder and acting Associate Director for the Bulosan Center for Filipinx Studies. He also serves as the founding Director of the Buloasan Center Internship Program. Wayne aims to support Asian American Studies and Ethnic Studies through his community engaged research and continuing his journey as a scholar activist in training.

I am honored to be nominated as a potential AAAS Student Representative. Since my first AAAS conference presentation experience in Miami 2016, I have always looked forward to opportunities for knowledge sharing, community building, and expanding the Asian American Studies as a field and tool towards collective liberation. If chosen for this position, I hope to continue building upon these values by honoring those who have come before us while building space for upcoming generations of scholar activists in the field.