Luis Abesamis

Luis Emmanuel A. Abesamis is a health social scientist with transdisciplinary training in anthropology, psychology, and sociology. Their research interests include transgender health, socio-political histories of public health, critical drug policy studies, gender and social policy, and community health engagement. Across their scholarship, Luis leverages community engaged methodologies and critical social theories to foreground how health and social inequities among gender and sexual minorities in the Philippines are products of long-standing and co-constitutive systems of oppression.

As a public health and gender consultant, Luis has contributed to and led research projects with various non-government organizations, including the World Health Organization, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the Asia Foundation, Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform, the DLSU Social Development Research Center, and the Philippine Human Rights Information Center.

Luis graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor’s degree in Behavioral Sciences from the University of the Philippines (UP) Manila (2020) and earned their Master’s degree in Health Social Science at De La Salle University Manila (2022). Currently, Luis is a fellow of the UP Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, senior lecturer at the UP Diliman Department of Sociology, and research associate at the Ateneo de Manila University Department of Development Studies. Luis is also Treasurer of the Philippine Sociological Society and a member of the International Advisory Board of the Community Development Journal.