The Division of Professional Education (ProfEd) and the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) have revived their brown bag discussions, featuring Dr. Eric Gutierrez as the first guest on August 22, 2024, at the Iloilo City campus.
A second round of this pre-pandemic tradition will take place today, August 27, at the Miagao campus’ MILC, with faculty members from the Division of Social Sciences participating.
Dr. Gutierrez, a research fellow in Political Ecology and Agrarian Studies at the University of Melbourne, is a practitioner-scholar and NGO worker with over 25 years of international experience.
He investigates public policy issues using both qualitative and quantitative research methods and specializes in the study of informal and illicit local economies.
In 2017, he received the Philippine National Book Award for Out of the Shadows, published by International Alert.
He also won the 1997 Philippine National Book Award for Pork and Other Perks, released by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.
In 1994, he received first prize for Best Investigative Report for a newspaper series uncovering conflicts of interest involving members of the House of Representatives, awarded by the JVO Foundation and the Philippine Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, among others.
During the discussion with ProfEd faculty members, Dr. Gutierrez shared the method he used to gather primary data for his most recent work, titled “Rethinking Illicit Economies in Opium and Cocaine: Policy Responses to Drug Crops in the Global South,” published in the Critical Development Studies series by Routledge, London. (GT Mabilog/IPO)
