Jonathan Victor Baldoza

I study the history of maritime Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines under Spain and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I’m primarily interested in knowledge-making techniques and practices under empire, across a variety of fields including anthropology, law, geography, philology, and other constituent domains of what we now consider the human and social sciences.

My dissertation, Making Filipiniana, examines the systematic creation and building of a scientific corpus of knowledge about the Philippine archipelago and its inhabitants. In particular, I explore how colonial agencies directed the collection, classification, and analysis of a plethora of materials to conceptualize and stage empirical constructions of Philippine prehistory, culture, and nationality.

Outside Princeton, my research has been supported by institutions including the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, the Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries, the Hagley Museum and Library, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, where I received the Laura K. & Valerian Lada-Mocarski Fellowship. For 2023-25, I am a collaborative fellow at the Institute of Asian, African, and Middle Eastern Studies (IAAMES) at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan.

Before coming to Princeton, I earned an MA from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA from the University of the Philippines, where I studied history and comparative literature. My research has been published in Archipel, Labor, and Philippine Studies, while reviews and other occasional pieces have appeared in Social Science Diliman, Budhi, Rappler, and The Mekong Review.