VANESSA BANTA

I am a social and feminist geographer with interests that cut across issues of migration, development and labor. The pursuit of social justice and active collaboration with the communities I do research with underpin most of my research, and I aim to always foreground the stories and knowledges of those often marginalized in state, institutional, even academic spaces.

Prior to joining NUS Geography, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography at University of Toronto-Scarborough. I completed my PhD in the University of British Columbia in 2020. My research primarily focused on how migrant reintegration, at once a global policy model and migration policy specific to and rooted in the very labor and economic conditions of the Philippines, can be viewed as as a complex socio-spatial process constituted by and is shaping various rationalities, actors, subjects and institutions in and beyond the Philippine state. I also trained in theatre and performance studies and formerly worked as an educator and theatre dramaturg.