Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2026-01: Enrique Gallardo on sustainable energy pathways in the Philippines

A global energy transition is well underway. 

Fueled by dystopian scenarios of the climate crisis, governments, big business, and civil society organizations around the world have been on overdrive to rapidly scale sustainable energy. On all fronts, sustainable energy is being mainstreamed — from efficient cook stoves to green buildings, from LEDs to ocean energy, from rooftop solar to low-enthalpy geothermal. The Philippines itself is on an aggressive trajectory in increasing its renewable energy capacity, with a target to source at least 50% of all its energy needs from renewables by 2040, and 70% by 2050. This includes major portfolios on biomass, geothermal, solar, hydro, and wind, with increasing explorations in ocean energy. 

On Friday, the 30th of January 2026 at 5:30PM via Zoom, Enrique Gallardo will deliver a talk with a title Renewable Energy and Geographic Contestations in the Philippines for the first Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2026. Presented by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS), this Heo/Geo Lecture is the first among many diamond celebrations of PGS which turned 75 last December. 

Enrique Gallardo Jr has over 20 years of renewable energy work experience, ranging from missionary electrification initiatives to the launch of the first green energy auction program in the Philippines. He has worked extensively with the Department of Energy, various distribution utilities / electric cooperatives, international development organizations, and the private sector. He obtained a Master of Science degree in Renewable Energy Systems and is currently completing his PhD in Philippine Studies, with a research focus on the global energy transition and its impact on Indigenous communities and geographies. At present he is teaching a course on the concepts and principles of land use at the UP Department of Geography. 

The talk provides a glimpse how the pursuit of so-called sustainable energy pathways is fomenting rapid land conversion, encroachment into critical spaces, and social conflict. On balance, the presentation also explores the necessity and benefits of renewable energy development in the country, specifically in the context of building energy resilience and security in an increasingly volatile world. Attention is also accorded to possible solutions, or at least convergences, that enable the pursuit of energy resilience while mitigating its impact on vulnerable communities and spaces.

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 the Environment and Development Geographies (EDGE) research group of the UP Department of Geography. The talk  is in line with the SDG #3 (Good Health and Well Being), #7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), 10 (Reduced Inequalities), #11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), #13 (Climate Action) and #15 (Life on Land) of the United Nations.

To participate in the lecture, click this link to register or just paste this link to your URL: https://tinyurl.com/44fthdye

Department of Geography and Faculty Get Recognition for 2025

The U.P. Department of Geography and faculty were recently recognized for various awards and achievements in quality assessment (QA), One UP professorial chairs and faculty grants, and as University Scientist.

The UP Department of Geography has earned recognition as a Data Champion from the UP Diliman Quality Assurance Office (UPD-QAO) for its significant contribution to the University's rankings. The recognition was conferred on 5 December 2025, during the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Times Higher Education (THE) Rankings Symposium. 

Meanwhile, 10 members of the faculty received the One UP Professorial Chair and Faculty Grant recognition for teaching and research excellence and public service. This is for the One UP 2025-2027 cycle.

Finally, UP conferred Jake Cadag the Scientist 1 recognition for his excellence in research and innovation, and scholarly leadership.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-12: Jessica Jacobs on the use of filmmaking and storytelling in community-led projects

In a Film Quarterly interview in 1970, Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha extolled that "we must be able to conceive of people all over making films in any form, in any shape, in any manner ... in every different way." His exhortation might as well apply to the newer and more progressive call to involve communities in employing film to tell local narratives using site-specific modes of production. In geography, the shift to the digital somehow opened up different modes and approaches in visual storytelling. Geographer and filmmaker Jessica Jacobs said that because "film is ... integral to the way people in the 21st century understand their world ... [it] helps geographers achieve a better understanding of how we experience our lived environment" (2016, p. 453).

For the 12th and last Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2025, the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) together with Film Geographies (Films in Place), the Film Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), the Geographic Society of UP (GeogSoc) and the Junior Philippine Geographical Society (JPGS) present Place-making intangible heritage and climate mitigation with storytelling to be delivered by Jessica Jacobs on Thursday, the 4th of December 2025 at 5:00PM in Pavilion 2248. In her presentation, Dr Jacobs will talk about the research endeavor called Storytelling for All.

Storytelling for All was a community-led research project providing heritage focused filmmaking workshops to Bedouin communities in the South Sinai. The films created from this project include a series of short felted animations made by Bedouin women from St, Catherine's and Dahab. Each film offers a different story of a unique place, told by the people who live there.

The project set out to critically engage with the ways in which Bedouin cultural heritage, particularly women’s heritage, has been romanticized, extracted, or rendered invisible within national development agendas, tourism economies, and Eurocentric academic frameworks (Jacobs 2020). While there is a reasonable amount of digital content available online about Bedouin culture, the vast majority of it is about men and produced by men. This presentation argues that community practices of handcrafting held by women are a form of matrilineal knowledge transfer that, if adapted for digital use, can contribute to a future oriented practice able to support climate change mitigation and adaptation as well as being a form of engagement with a hard to reach community that can contribute more broadly to sustainable economic development.

For her presentation, Dr Jacobs will discuss the films produced by the project and argue that the stories they contain not only offer advice on sustainable practices for climate change mitigation and adaptation they also show us vital the role of matrilineal intergenerational knowledge transfer is, in keeping this knowledge, alive.

The Heo/Geo Lecture by Dr Jacobs is preceded by a 2-hour film workshop called 'Crafting Your Research Story with Film' from 2:30-4:30PM on 4 December in Pavilion 2248. To join in this workshop, please click this link to participate, or just paste this link to your browser: https://forms.gle/zzE6UQ8CajhRhHXr6

Dr Jacobs is a Research Fellow at the Queen Mary University of London. Her work focuses on heritage and tourism in the Middle East with a particular interest in how heritage is visualized, remembered and enacted through the production of tourist space. Dr Jacobs' research methods and outputs use filmmaking, creative mapping and other community focused strategies that aim to engage a wider audience within the scope of academic research and knowledge production.

Dr Jacobs is the founder of Film Geographies, an online forum for films and filmmaking as a form of academic practice and knowledge production. Film Geographies organise two annual calls for films AAG Shorts and RGS-IBG Shorts, to promote films by geographers and films about geography. Founded in 2016, Film Geographies now have over 150 films online.

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, emplaces 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 a plurality of voices. The name Heo/Geo is itself an acknowledgment of the various understandings, meanings and pronunciations of geography in its indigenous and vernacular forms as well as the Anglicized name that has since been adopted and adapted to the local lexicon.

Dr Jacobs's lecture is the inaugural MELANGE Lecture speaker presented by the MELANGE research group of the UP Department of Geography. MELANGE stands for Media, Literary Geographies and Geohumanites, and the lecture is in line with the SDGs #4 (Quality Education), and #13 (Climate Action) of the United Nations.

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Notes:

Gordon Hitchens (1970). The Way to Make a Future: A Conversation with Glauber Rocha, Film Quarterly, 24.1 (Autumn, 1970), pp. 27-30.

Jessica Jacobs. (2020). Fabricating herstory: Using embroidery to map Bedouin tribal borders in South Sinai. Journal of Arts & Communities, 11.1-2, pp. 109-127.

Jessica Jacobs (2016). Filmic geographies: the rise of digital film as aresearch method and output, Area, 48.4, pp. 452–454.