Mars Edwenson Briones is a PhD student and research assistant at MESH. His research draws upon geohumanities, the anthropology of disaster, and island studies to investigate how creative and discursive expressions of place and its hazards articulate broader ideas about nature-society entanglements, including the ways island and archipelagic spatialities and thinking bear upon the experience of disasters in Eastern Visayas, Philippines.
He completed his master’s degree in Art Studies (Art History) at the University of the Philippines Diliman in 2020. His master’s thesis In the Realms of Image: The Waray Ecology of Devotion to the Santo Niño de Tacloban examines the relations among art, devotion, and place—detailing the history and iconology of the Santo Niño image and the spatial imaginaries that surround it.
In 2013, he obtained his bachelor’s degree in Communication Arts from the University of the Philippines Visayas – Tacloban College, where he then served as a faculty member of the Division of Humanities from 2013 to August 2022. From 2020-2021, he was one of the regional curators of the exhibition component of the Visayas Islands Visual Arts Exhibition and Conference (VIVA ExCon), Kalibutan: The World in Mind. From 2011-2014, he was an active member of AFS-Intercultural Programs Philippines, which is part of an international, volunteer-based organization that facilitates intercultural learning.
Contact: mbriones[at]uni-koeln.de