Prof. Maria Cynthia Rose Banzon-Bautista will be the Keynote Speaker in the 2016 Philippine Sociological Society Annual Conference. Prof. Bautista is currently a Commissioner at the Commission on Higher Education (CHED).  She is on secondment from her post as Professor of Sociology the University of the Philippines-Diliman.

Prof. Bautista will deliver a paper on “Transformative Sociology: Power and Knowledge in Philippine Society” (tentative title). She will address an expected audience of more than 200 sociologists from the Philippines and overseas. Ateneo de Davao University’s Department of Sociology is the lead convener of this year’s conference.  [Click here for more information about the conference]

The scope of Prof. Bautista’s scholarship covers a range of topics, including the complexities of Filipino diaspora, human security and disasters, and culture and urbanization, among others.

She served as Dean of UP Diliman’s College of Social Sciences and Philosophy and the Executive Director of the Center for Integrative and Development Studies.  She was part of the Advisory Board, Management Board, Board of Trustees or Executive Board of various institutions including the National University of Singapore’s Asian Research Institute, the Philippine Institute of Development Studies, the Human Development Network, the Philippine Social Science Council, Pulse Asia, Inc, the Social Weather Stations, Inc, the UP Press, the Ford Foundation’s International Fellowship Program and the Asian Scholarship Foundation. She is also currently serving as the chairperson of the regional Task Force on the ASEAN Qualifications Reference Framework (AQRF) and the UNESCO National Commission’s Social Sciences and Humanities Committee.

Prof. Bautista is a prize-winning sociologist. Among her awards include the National Research Council of the Philippines’ Achievement Award for the Social Sciences; the UP Alumni Association’s Professional Achievement Award; the Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service (TOWNS); the National Academy of Science and Technology’s (NAST) Outstanding Young Scientist Award and the NAST Outstanding Publication Award.

Dr. Bautista obtained her BA degree from the University of the Philippines in Diliman and her MS and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.