Lemuel Magaling
2022-2025
- PhD candidate Bonn, International Graduate School-Oriental and Asian Studies, Universität Bonn
- DAAD-German Colonial Rule, Scholarship Programme for Cooperative Research
2022
- Master of Arts in Asian Studies - Asian Center, University of the Philippines-Diliman
- Participant, 3rd Summer School Resilience and Control, Transmissible Disease and the rise of Modern Society – Department of History, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada
- Participant, MMAT 2021 Summer Course Program, “(Re)constructing Southeast Asia” – Center For Southeast Asian Social Studies (CESASS), Universitas Gadjah Mada
2019
- Research Fellow, Facultad de Geografía e Historia, Universitat de Valencia
2018
- Graduate Research Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
- Participant, 16th Ateneo National Writers' Workshop – Ateneo Institute of Literary Arts and Practices
2017
- Bachelor of Arts, Creative Writing in Filipino - College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines-Diliman
2021
- Junior Editor and Co-manager of Publication – Commission on Filipino Languages, Republic of the Philippines
2020
- Overseas Research Assistant – Prof. Hajimu Masuda, Department of History, National University of Singapore
2018-2019 Project Management Specialist – National Privacy Commission, Republic of the Philippines
Politics of Polarization: Exploring German Foreign Relations with Local Resistance in Colonial Southeast Asia and South Pacific from late 19th to early 20th Century using Complex Systems Approach
Abstract:
This study explores the role of diplomatic relations of Imperial Germany with local resistance by tracing and comparing ideological synchronization, frictions, and asymmetries co-created by distant decision-makers in the seat of power and by those on the ground carrying out German interests abroad. This will lead to materials in advancing regional strategic studies and comparative empire studies by looking at the ideology of German foreign policy, and how it became instrumental or detrimental for resistance movements in Southeast Asia and South Pacific as a historic strategy in polarizing power in the region. There is no shortage of literature concerning the impacts of colonialism in the Pacific that mostly dealt with the United States, Great Britain, Japan, Spain, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands. Few studies have evaluated German entanglement both with powers as well as with the population in the region. Imperial German policies have played a part in the formation and polarization of what is now maritime Southeast Asia and South Pacific islands through the imperative of rulers from European capitals and by those on the ground working towards the completion of these imperial goals. The complexity of later colonialism in the concert of imperial powers that Germany would later join has contributed to the polarization of politics that affected the contours of power in the region. This research will trace Germany’s strategy in installing itself within the politics of the region during late colonialism by investigating the malleability of political organizations and by interrogating the cohesiveness of German integration within Austronesian conception of power. Concepts complexify when they operate and materialize through strategy. Strategy is the expression of ideology but under the pressure of the immanence of contradictions within itself. Traditional history reconstructs the evolution of power by the coordinates of actors responding to events, from the standpoint of decision-makers (in this case Kaiser Wilhelm II and his chancellors) and subsequently to those on the ground carrying out its completion (i.e. German Admirals, Colonial administrators, diplomats and other agents). History from a complex systems approach takes into account and treats the evolution of power not only as a product of pragmatic decision making measures but as a process of ideologies taking shape through the motion of its materialization. Polarity therefore is part of the process of this complexification. The more complex the force the more it yields to polarization. Most studies concerning anti-colonial scholarship were focused on the role of ideologies like Social Democracy, Anarchism, and Marxism in nationalists and anti-colonial movements in the early part of the 20th century. Recent scholarships have only begun surfacing albeit short and fragmented on the role of diplomacy, geopolitics, and inter-imperialist dynamics. This dissertation attempts to create an integrative study of the roles of strategic designs of diplomacy and the tactical nature of local resistance by understanding the motion and dispersion of forces at play during the late colonial period.
2021
- Imperial temporalities, Insurgent Futures: Comparisons of 20th Century Political Thinkers in Indonesia and the Philippines (M.A. Thesis) (2021), Asian Center, University of the Philippines-Diliman
- ‘Homecoming / Eventually’ at UP Vargas Museum (2021), Art and Market https://artandmarket.net/reviews/2021/7/26/homecoming-eventually-at-up-vargas-museum
2018
- 13th Singapore Graduate Student Forum on Asian Studies, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, "La Redención de la Imaginacion de Los Trabajadores: Forms of Consciousness in Historical Trade Unions in the Philippines and Southeast Asian Labour Movements from 1900-1930s".
2017
- Protest and Dissent in Translation and Culture, “A Stone’s Throw Away: Bridging the Transgressive and the Subversive in Philippine Post-war Poetry”, SWPS; Warsaw Poland, May
- Corpus Historicus: The Body in/of History International Conference, University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland, “Missing Encounters/Counting the Missing: Presentation and Representation of Two contending Narratives in the discourse of the Hero’s Burial”
2016
- 14th Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day Historical Conference, NISMED Auditorium, University of the Philippines, "The crux of Calderon's Courage: Felipe Calderon's role in Nation-Building and his constitutional ideas".
- The 4th Literary Studies Conference "Children's Literature in Southeast Asia", Universitas Sanata Dharma, Yogyakarta Indonesia, "From the Playground to the Battleground: A comparative analysis of Battle of Surabaya and Kangkong 1896"
2022
- Creative/Critical Thesis Grants in the Arts, Culture, and Humanities – Office for the Initiatives in Culture and the Arts, University of the Philippines-Diliman
2020
- Individual Research Award – National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), Republic of the Philippines
2019
- Becas Jóvenes Investigadores – Universitat de Valencia, Spain
2017
- Travel Award Grant – National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), Republic of the Philippines