Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-11: Mylene De Guzman on pedagogy-based service learning in geography

Extension work and services in the academic setting can engender multiple approaches, not to mention definitions that hover around 'outreach', 'town-gown relations' and the provision of 'human capital-enhancing inputs' as Anderson and Feder prefer to call it (2003, 2). 

Like most academic units in the UP System, the Department of Geography of UP Diliman provides extension services to its multiple publics. Mobilizing specific undergraduate and graduate courses, the extent of the Department's various partnerships with local communities result in a range of field-based undertakings. From capacity-building skills rooted in geographic technologies and methods to the co-production of specific and particular outputs deemed important by the communities, the Department learned various (geography) lessons that not only recognize that the ever-shifting priorities of communities require reflexive innovations, but also in maintaining and sustaining multi-scalar relations.

For the month of November, the focus of the Heo/Geo Lecture Series is in presenting a version of the Department of Geography's model (if you will) of service learning culled from several years of grounded pedagogy-based engagements with local communities as well as public and private organizations. Mylene De Guzman, a member of the faculty of the UP Diliman Department of Geography will present Geography Beyond the Classroom: Service Learning as Pedagogy on Friday, 21 November 2025 at 5:30PM via Zoom.

The presentation highlights the processes and reflections of service-learning activities of the Department from 1995 to 2024. Service-learning combines classroom instruction with community service and is a vital component of several courses offered in the B.S. Geography curriculum. Service-Learning in Geography (SLG) courses enable students to acquire practical work experience using techniques, knowledge, and ideas learned as geography students while serving various publics. Fieldwork is an essential part of conducting geographic research, and the SLG courses are designed to train students in conducting fieldwork and collecting and analyzing empirical data using geographic theories, concepts, analytical techniques, and methods. The presentation examines the incorporation of service-learning into the undergraduate and graduate curricula, reflects on the challenges that faculty handlers have faced, and charts novel ways of conducting geographic research that incorporates service-learning in Philippine higher education. 

This presentation is an excerpt of a joint publication of nine faculty members of UPD Geography titled 'Integrating Service Learning in Geography in Philippine Higher Education' which came out in the Winter 2024 issue of the Pennsylvania Geographer. SLG not only fulfills the university’s mandate as a public service university, as stated in the UP Charter of 2008 (Republic Act No. 9500) but also serves as a reflexive examination of the collaborations and partnerships between Geography as an academic unit and as "a step towards addressing ... social concerns by applying learned skills and knowledge to benefit local communities" (De Guzman et al, 2024, 2).

Dr Mylene De Guzman is an Assistant Professor in the UPD Department of Geography. Her research interests span labor geographies, lesbian geographies, risk perception, geonarratives, digital geographies, and geographic education and pedagogy. Dr De Guzman’s research employs the aca-fan lenses in studying K-Pop acts both as an analytical and reflexive frame in relation to moving image, geographies of music, spectatorship, and positionality.  She is currently the Vice President for Internals and Memberships of the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) and an active member of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). She is currently serving as the Managing Editor of the Korean Social Science Journal (KSSJ), the official journal of the Korean Social Science Research Council (KOSSREC). But more than these academic commitments, she cares and serves two senior cats: Coco and Pepper.

As in previous iterations, the Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a monthly resource talk / lecture given by academic geographers, geography-adjacent scholars, practitioners working in geospatial industries, and partners that engaged in multiple publics, and based locally and abroad. The talk ranges from the sharing of research findings to pedagogical practices and field-based experiences. 

Dr De Guzman's lecture is co-organised by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society. It is also presented by the Human Geography (HUG), Geographies of Disaster and Hazards (GEDI), Environment and Development Geographies (EDGE), Media, Literary Geographies and Geohumanites (MELANGE), and the Geographic Information Systems and Techniques (GIST) research groups of the UP Department of Geography and is in line with the SDG #4 (Quality Education), #10 (Reduced Inequalities), #3 (Good Health and Well Being), #15 (Life on Land) and #13 (Climate Action) of the United Nations.

To virtually attend the talk, please click this link to participate: https://tinyurl.com/4y4f752k

*Notes

While the members of the faculty constantly review, evaluate and reflect on the conduct of each class with an SLG component, one of the Department's SLG courses  -- the Geography Field School [Geography 192 (Field Methods in Geography)] -- has received the following recognition both in UP System and UP Diliman: 2017 Gawad Pangulo Award for  Excellence in Public Services, and 2016 Best Extension Program of Degree Granting Units. 

*Citations

Anderson, J.R. and Feder, G. (2003). Rural extension services. Policy Research, Working Paper 2976. World Bank: The Agriculture and Rural Development Program and Development Research Group.

De Guzman, M., Martinez, M.S., Garcia, E., Palis, J., Anacta, V.J., Cadag, J.R., Amorsolo, D.S., Ocampo, L.A. and Gutierrez, D. (2024). Service Learning in Geography in Philippine Higher Education, Pennsylvania Geographer, Volume 62, No. 2 - Fall/Winter 2024, 1-22.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-10: Yaw Ofosu-Asare on landscape, decolonisation and everyday design

In The Four Seasons of Ethnography (2014), scholar and writer Sarah Amira de la Garza asserted that a Eurocentric perspective has insinuated itself to the wisdom traditions of local communities everywhere in ways that insist on domination, superiority and ownership. Providing a 'rich tapestry' and culture-specific contexts to emphasize lived experiences, scholar Yaw Ofosu-Asare employs storied-ethnography as a qualitative methodology that finds kindred affinity to postcolonial theory and participatory research towards "centring and valuing the narratives of those traditionally marginalized in scholarly research" (2025, p. 10). Through counter-acts, storied ethnography and creation-centered ontologies, there is an active refusal in the "erasure of lifeworlds" (Gagnon, 2024, p. 100). 

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series presents a lecture titled Land, Story and Design: Cultural Geographies of Care and Decolonisation from Dr Yaw Ofosu-Asare from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University on 17 October 2025, Friday at 5:30PM (Philippines Standard Time / 7:30PM AEST) via Zoom. 

The talk explores the geography of design as lived practice, showing how communities inscribe memory, resilience, and identity into landscapes through storytelling, ritual, and everyday design. Reading from his most recent book African Design Futures (2024), Ofosu-Asare centres the narrative of Efua from Edina, a coastal town in Ghana, to illustrate how coastal life, market spaces, and communal rituals embody forms of environmental care and spatial knowledge. These ideas may find echoes in the Philippines, where Indigenous practices, local markets, and rituals also root people’s relationship to land and sea. Alongside this, Dr Ofosu-Asare draws on Decolonising Design in Africa to pose a provocation: in seeking to decolonise, how do we avoid creating new hierarchies of knowledge? Together, these perspectives invite us to see landscapes not only as sites of ecological management but also as cultural geographies where futures are imagined and lived.

Yaw Ofosu-Asare is a Ghanaian designer, educator, and researcher based in Australia whose work bridges decolonial design, critical pedagogy, and African futures. He is the author of Decolonising Design in Africa: Towards New Theories, Methods, and Practices (Routledge, 2024) and African Design Futures: Decolonising Minds, Education, Spaces, and Practices (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). With a PhD in Education, his research explores the intersections of Indigenous knowledge systems, storytelling, and visual communication as tools for liberation and transformation.

Currently he is a Lecturer in Communication Design at RMIT University, where he  guides students in connecting theory and practice through industry-partnered studios and critical approaches to design pedagogy. Alongside his teaching, Dr Ofosu-Asare designed for grassroots organisations, educational institutions, and global social change movements, blending community-based design with speculative thinking. He also contributes to projects on climate justice, disability inclusion, and cultural sustainability. His work is rooted in a deep commitment to equity, memory, and creative reimagination.

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a monthly lecture given by academic scholars, field-based geography practitioners, members of the local community, and spatial justice advocates to share their knowledge- and practice-based research undertakings. Jointly presented by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS), the Heo/Geo Lecture Series which previously underwent several iterative rebranding positions geography as a discipline that not only straddles the realms of natural/physical and social sciences, humanities, political ecologies, regional and area studies, GI technologies and geospatial storytelling, it is also a vibrant and convivial space that welcomes multiplicities and plural voices. The name Heo/Geo is itself an accommodation to the various understandings, meanings and pronunciations of geography in its indigenous and vernacular forms and the Anglicized name that has since been adapted in the local lexicon.

Dr Ofosu-Asare's lecture is also presented by the Human Geography (HUG) and Media, Literary Geographies and Geohumanites (MELANGE) research groups of the UP Department of Geography and is in line with the SDG #4 (Quality Education) of the United Nations.

To participate in the lecture, please register through this link: https://tinyurl.com/5bvfkrjn

--

Works cited:

De la Garza, S A (2014). The Four Seasons of Ethnography: A Creation-Centered Ontology for Ethnography, In The Global Intercultural Communication Reader, 2nd edition (M K Asante, Y Miike and J Yin [eds.]), Routledge, pp. 151-173.

Gagnon, T (2024). Storying Against Dispossession: Nurturing Memories of Other Worlds, In Embodying Biodiversity: Sensory Conservation as Refuge and Sovereignty (T V Gagnon [ed.]), The University of Arizona Press, pp. 79-104.

Ofosu-Asare, Y (2025). Reimagining foundations: Storied-ethnography as a pathway to decolonized design education, Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, pp. 1-29.

Ofosu-Asare, Y (2024). African Design Futures: Decolonising Minds, Education, Spaces, and Practices. Springer Nature/Palgrave Macmillan.

Ofosu-Asare, Y (2024). Decolonising Design in Africa: Towards New Theories, Methods, and Practices, Routledge.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-09: Chris Sorio on spatial justice among Filipino migrants in Canada

In writing about urban labor migration of Filipinos in Canada, Philip Kelly emphasized the spatiality of class in studying mobilities because "class subjectivities might be complicated by the spatiality of migration, which is an ... important feature of the global economy" (Kelly, 2012, p. 154). While scholarly materials have been written about Filipinos in Canada in relation to assimilation and identity, labor migration and transnational habitus, few have been written about migrant geographies from the perspective of a labor organiser and worker. 

For the ninth lecture for 2025 of the Heo/Geo Lecture Series of the UP Department of Geography and co-sponsored by the UP Center for International Studies (UP CIS), Chris Sorio will talk about narratives of Filipino labor migrants: his and other Filipino workers in Canada. Sorio's talk titled Radical Routes: Filipino Migrant Narratives and Spatial Justice in Canada happens on Friday, 12 September 2025 at 5:30PM Philippine Standard Time (5:30AM Eastern Standard Time) via Zoom. 

The talk is preceded by a screening of filmmaker Alfredo Ruzol's short film Recipe for Change which focused on Chris Sorio, and which was shown in Toronto in 2024. The Philippine Reporter which covered the event in Seneca Polytechnic singled out Ruzol's film, thus "[t]he documentary revisits Sorio’s harrowing experience during the Marcos Sr. dictatorship in the Philippines. At just 21 years old, Sorio was arrested and tortured by soldiers in Manila in 1982. Now living in Toronto, he continues his activism to ensure that this dark chapter of history is not forgotten."

Sorio's presentation, on the other hand, examines the lived experiences of Filipino migrants in Canada through the lens of spatial justice, drawing upon radical geography to illuminate the intersections of displacement, labour, and resistance. By foregrounding personal narratives and community histories, it explores how Filipino migrants navigate and contest the socio-spatial inequalities embedded within Canada’s immigration and labour systems. The analysis highlights the ways in which migrants transform everyday spaces—such as workplaces, community centres, and domestic environments—into sites of agency and solidarity. Through this exploration, the presentation aims to shed light on the broader implications for understanding migrant geographies and the pursuit of spatial justice in contemporary Canada.

Chris Sorio is currently the secretary general of Migrante Canada—a grassroots organization supporting temporary foreign workers and immigrants. He is currently an MA student in critical human geography at the Environmental and Urban Change of York University. Alfredo Ruzol is a filmmaker and media producer who pursues untold stories about climate justice, human rights, social issues, and peacebuilding. Recipe for Change was recently shortlisted in the Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia 2025. 

The event is co-sponsored by the UP Diliman Department of Geography, the Center for International Studies, and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS). The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a monthly resource talk / lecture given by academic geographers, geography-adjacent scholars, practitioners working in geospatial industries, and partners that engaged in multiple publics, and based locally and abroad. The talk ranges from the sharing of research findings to pedagogical practices and field-based experiences. This month's Heo/Geo Lecture Series is facilitated by two research clusters at the UP Department of Geography: Human Geography (HUG) and Media, Literary Geographies, and Geohumanities (MELANGE). 

To participate in the event, click this link to register. You can also click this link: https://tinyurl.com/2t9b6b8t