Maria is a Research Fellow/Lecturer in the Department of International Relations. She was awarded her PhD in Politics and International Relations from Monash University in 2018. Prior to joining ANU, Maria was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Monash Centre for Gender, Peace and Security. She was also a University Scholar at the University of the Philippines-Diliman where she received her undergraduate degree in Political Science, magna cum laude. She also received first class honours for both her BA (Hons) and Masters by Research in Political Studies at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Maria's research has consistently gained distinction through invitations in competitive workshops, prizes and awards including the International Studies Association Emerging Global South Scholar Workshop (2019); Australian International Political Economy Network Journal Article Prize (2018); and the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) Early Career Research Impact Award (2018).

Currently, Maria serves as a program co-chair for the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies(FTGS) section of the International Studies Association.

Global politics of sexual and reproductive health, global political economy and social reproduction in crisis settings, feminist critiques of postconflict and postdisaster crisis response, feminist methodologies in IR

Her research agenda is motivated by the grand challenge of understanding gendered insecurities, contestations and transformative politics in the context of multiple and intersecting crises. Maria focuses on the Asia Pacific region and the Philippines in particular to analyse multiple sites where conflicts, disasters, economic recessions, health epidemics and rising fundamentalisms increasingly constitute the overlapping risks and hazards impacted by climate change. With this agenda, her research aims to contribute to IR scholarship and policy-making through 1) multi-scalar analyses that begin with the particularised lives of women from/in/through the margins; and 2) to formulate radical visions for change focused not simply on ‘building back’ but rather about possibilities for flourishing and regeneration in the age of recurrent crises.

This body of work is being developed in publications with journals such as Review of International Studies; Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society; Gender & Development, the International Feminist Journal of Politics and Human Rights Quarterly; book chapters in edited volumes; and through public engagements such as commentaries via the Australian Institute of International Affairs’ Australian Outlook, and media interviews.