Postdoctoral Fellow

Ariel Dela Cruz (they/he) received his Phd. from Cornell University. An interdisciplinary scholar whose work operates at the intersection of Filipinx Diasporic Studies, Trans Studies, Performance Studies, and Sexuality and Gender Studies, his research explores the ways Filipino/a/x tomboys ethically negotiate the Filipinx labour diaspora. By focusing on tomboys, a Philippine cultural term that describes lower and working-class lesbians, butchness, and transmasculinity, his research envisions new possibilities for theorizing and understanding global care work from the perspectives of tomboy subjectivities. His scholarship considers the gender and class sensibilities of tomboys as central to understanding everyday community-building, domesticity, intimacy, masculinity, activism, and care in the contexts of globalization and diaspora. Currently, he is working on a monograph titled “Tomboy Ethics: Performances of Care Across the Filipinx Labour Diaspora,” which makes use of an array of methodologies including the sociological method of kwentuhan (Filipino talk-storying), autoethnography, participant observation, media, discourse, and textual analysis, as well as feminist, queer, trans, and performance studies approaches to analyze several case studies and cultural objects.

Previous Postdoctoral Fellows

2024-26- Ruth Ramsden-Karelse

2023-25: LJ Slovin

2021-22: Elif Sari

2019-21: Sara Shroff