I hold a PhD in Classical Archaeology from the University of Alberta and am currently a new Assistant Professor of Greek Archaeology at the University of Western Ontario.

I was raised on both sides of the Pacific, born in Quezon City, Philippines, and raised in Surrey, British Columbia. I am what you call a 1.5-generation immigrant, having moved to Canada as a pre-teen—young enough to assimilate easily into Vancouverite culture but old enough to maintain my Filipino language and habits (especially music and gluttony).

Greece, however, was always in the stars for me. As a child, years before my family moved to Canada, I found a book on Classical Greece and fell into a massive rabbit hole that led to teaching myself Ancient Greek as an 8-year-told. Fast forward to Spring Break of 2003 when I was in highschool. I discovered the Foreign Language section of the Surrey Public Library and found books on Modern Greek. I devoured as much as I could and was near-fluent before I was 17.

I didn’t see myself going into a career in Classics, even after I started undergrad at the University of British Columbia and was taking too many Classical Studies courses despite not being a major in it. It took me two whole years to realize that going into Classics was an inevitability.

My original plan was to specialize in Bronze Age Crete because I had been absolutely captivated by the Minoans since I was in highschool. Enter my first field school. I took part in the excavations of the Kastro Kallithea Archaeological Project in Thessaly, Greece in 2009. The region fascinated me endlessly, and I never really left.

I ended up doing a Master’s Degree in Classical Archaeology at UBC and continuing on to a PhD at the University of Alberta, but not before spending a year as a research fellow in Athens at the Canadian Institute in Greece. I came back to Vancouver as a postdoc for the Database of Religious History at UBC and moved to London, Ontario where I am Assistant Professor of Greek Archaeology at Western University.