AN ENGLISH professor from the Faculty of Arts and Letters has been appointed assistant director of the UST Research Center for Social Sciences and Education (RCSSED).
Asst. Prof. Katrina Topacio of the English department assumed the post last Jan. 15, replacing Asst. Prof. Pia Tenedero, who served as RCSSED deputy director for more than a year.
Topacio said she seeks to increase the University’s contributions to women and gender studies, which according to her, is still lacking.
“Compared to other institutions in the country, UST is still finding its space in gender research in the country. We still have to find ways to contribute more strongly to the country’s gender and development agenda,” Topacio told The Flame in an email interview.
She noted that the research center also aims to harness its power not only to produce knowledge but also to use such knowledge for community building and development.
“For instance, our Research Utilization Unit is currently working on crafting policies informed by research, hoping that in the future, our research can be transformed into state-adopted policies,” the Artlets professor added.
Topacio is a thesis coordinator and instructor of the English Language Studies program. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education major in English in 2004 and master’s degree in English Language Studies in 2009, both in UST.
She is also the secretary of nonprofit organization Transformare, which seeks to promote an interdisciplinary approach to literacy education.
In 2020, Topacio, alongside fellow RCSSED researcher Asst. Prof. Gina Lontoc, obtained the Seedcorn Grant from the British Association for International and Comparative Education to pursue a study on the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on adult learning in the Philippines, Afghanistan and the United Kingdom.
Topacio has published multiple papers involving linguistics, psychology and gender studies in various international journals. In 2021, she and Assoc. Prof. Rosalyn Mirasol published a study in Reading Psychology titled “Reading perceptions, needs, and practices among parents of an urban poor community in the Philippines.”
A year later, she wrote the paper “Representing the modern Filipino housewife: Presuppositions in Good Housekeeping Philippines” in the Asian Women Journal.
The RCSSED was established in 2017 with the aim of producing academic and policy-focused research about education and socio-economic issues in the Philippines. F
