Antonio F. B. de Castro was born in Jolo, Sulu on 13 June 1960. He went through basic education at Notre Dame of Jolo and to the Ateneo de Manila University where he procured the AB in Philosophy. He then entered the Society of Jesus in 1981.

He enrolled in some courses on Islam at the Institute of Islamic Studies, University of the Philippines. In 1991, he obtained the degree Bachelor in Sacred Theology (STB). Ordained to the priesthood in March 1992, he was granted both the MA in Theology (Ateneo de Manila University) and the Licentiate in Sacred Theology. He was then sent to the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome to do a licentiate and doctorate in Church History. He was Associate Professor of Church History at the Loyola School of Theology and for many years taught courses in philosophy, theology, and history at the Ateneo de Manila University. He was series editor of the Mindanao Studies publications of the Ateneo de Manila University Press for some time, and has contributed chapters to books such as Theology, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (2019) and Philippine Local Churches After the Spanish Regime: Quae Mari Sinico and Beyond (2015).  He has published several articles as well in journals such as Landas (Journal of the Loyola School of Theology) and Philippine Studies.  Currently, he is Associate Professor of the School of Liberal Arts, Ateneo de Zamboanga University.

Wystan de la Peña teaches translation and Philippine literature in Spanish courses at the Department of European Languages, College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines-Diliman.  While his principal expertise is Fil-hispanic literature, he also translates literary and historical materials. His published translations "Mariano Ponce: Cartas Sobre la Revolución" and "Portrait of the Artist in 1956" (prose part of "Jaime Gil de Biedma in the Philippines: Prose and Poetry / Jaime Gil de Biedma en Filipinas: Prosa y Poesía") were both adjudged finalists in the Translation Category of the National Book Awards in separate years. He also collaborated as archival materials translator for the National Book Award-winning titles Working Women in Manila in the 19th Century by Ma. Luisa Camagay and Cine: Spanish Influences on Early Cinema by Nick Deocampo.

Gary Devilles took up Media Studies for a Ph.D. at La Trobe University, Melbourne, and his book, Sensing Manila, was recently published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press. He is the current chair of Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, one of the oldest group of film critics in the country, which hands out the Gawad Urian annually. He is also working on Manila sounds and auditory cultures.

Ariel Diccion completed his MA in Literature (Filipino) in Ateneo de Manila University in 2011 and has been teaching as an Instructor under the School of Humanities, Department of Filipino since 2002. He was also a visiting faculty member at Peking University in 2012 and 2016 and at Beijing Foreign Studies University in 2019, teaching Philippine Language and Literature to foreign students. 

Ariel performs with Silly People’s Improv Theater (SPIT) and Beijing Improv, premier improvisational theater troupes in Manila and Beijing respectively. He is also part of Third World Improv faculty, the first and only improv training school in the Philippines. 

His research interests on ritual, drama, performance and the trickster archetype inform his work and play.

Mark Dizon is assistant professor in the Department of History at the Ateneo de Manila University. His interests are in the cross-cultural encounters of the early modern world. His current research project is on the mobilities in an eighteenth-century Philippine borderland.

María Dolores Elizalde is Scientific Researcher at the Institute of History, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), in Madrid, Spain. She specialises in international history, colonial societies, and colonial and postcolonial processes in Asia and the Pacific in the nineteenth century, with a particular interest on the Philippines. Among her latest publications are: Filipinas, siglo XIX: Coexistencia e interacción entre comunidades en el imperio español (Madrid, Polifemo, 2017), edited with Xavier Huetz de Lemps, and Los Roxas. Filipinas en el siglo XIX a través de una familia hispano-filipina (Madrid, Marcial Pons, 2020).

Si Larraine F. Fernando ay nagtapos sa Ateneo de Zamboanga University ng Bachelor of Secondary Education major in Filipino noong 2010. Ngayong 2021, magtatapos naman siya ng Master of Arts in Literature - Filipino sa Ateneo de Manila University. Mula 2010 hanggang kasalukuyan, nagtuturo siya ng asignaturang Filipino. Siya ngayon ay guro sa Junior High School ng Ateneo de Manila University habang patuloy na nagiging interes ng kaniyang mga pagbabasa at pananaliksik ang mga pag-aaral tungkol sa Mindanao.

Dr. Kristie Flannery obtained her doctorate in history at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently a research fellow at the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne. Kristie researches and writes about the history and legacies of the global Spanish empire. Her new book exploring the history of piracy and colonialism in the early modern Philippines is under contract with U Penn Press.

Born and raised in Manila and now a New Yorker, Luis H. Francia is a poet, playwright, and nonfiction writer and has worked as a journalist. He is also an adjunct professor at New York University. His nonfiction works include the memoir Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago (Kaya Press, 2001), winner of both the 2002 PEN Open Book Award and the 2002 Asian American Writers award, and Memories of Overdevelopment: Reviews and Essays of Two Decades (Anvil Publishing, 1998). His A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipinos (Overlook Press) was published in 2010, with a revised edition released in 2014. His latest collection of nonfiction, RE: Reflections, Reviews, and Recollections, was released by the University of the Philippines Press in 2015. His latest poetry collection is Tattered Boat (UP Press, 2014). Previous collections include The Arctic Archipelago and Other Poems, Museum of Absences, and The Beauty of Ghosts. His first full-length play, on the absurdities of dictatorial rule, The Strange Case of Citizen de la Cruz, was given its world premiere by Bindlestiff Studio in San Francisco in 2012. Another play, Black Henry, on Magellan’s 1521 landfall in the Philippines, was staged by New York University in late April of this year, the quincentennial of that historic voyage.

See Luis Francia's "Black Henry - Full-length Play" at https://www.kjcc.org/event/online-event-black-henry/

Jose Mario C. Francisco, a Filipino Jesuit Professor at Ateneo de Manila University, did graduate studies and research in the Philippines, the U.S.A., and Germany. He has taught at Boston College as Gasson Professor, the Jesuit School of Theology (Berkeley, CA), and the Pontifical Gregorian University (Rome). His research and publications focus on the interphase between religion and cultural studies in the Philippine and Asian contexts.

Eduardo Jorge Miranda Frutuoso (Torres Vedras, 1964) has a degree in History from the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa and a specialization in Asian Studies from the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto. He has published several studies, both as author and co-author, among which are O Arbitrismo Ibérico entre Macau e Manila: População, Comércio e Finanças (Macao, 2014), Naufrágios e Outras Perdas da Carreira da Índia: Século XVI e XVII (Lisbon, 1998), O Movimento do Porto de Lisboa e o Comércio Luso-Brasileiro (1769–1836) (Lisbon, 2001), and As Armadas da Índia (1497–1835) (Lisbon, 2002). He worked at the Grupo de Trabalho do Ministério da Educação para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses and in the regional structure of the Ministry of Education. He is currently a secondary school teacher.

Dr. Javier Galván has been the director of Instituto Cervantes de Manila since 2019. This is the second time he is serving as its director as he also previously occupied this position from 2001–2006. 

He obtained his doctorate degree from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid with his thesis entitled Architecture and Urbanism of Spanish Origin in the Western Pacific (2004).

Prior to his appointment as Director of Instituto Cervantes de Manila in 2001, Dr. Galván was engaged in various projects in the Philippines relating to heritage architecture and urban planning. He is the editor of the book Endangered, a compilation of the papers read at the First International Congress on Fil-Hispanic Architecture, as well as the architect of the old building of Instituto Cervantes on T.M. Kalaw Street. He continues publishing articles and giving conferences on Fil-Hispanic architecture in the Philippines and in Spain. 

For his works on Fil-Hispanic historical heritage, for his efforts toward the strengthening of ties between the Philippines and Spain, and for his services toward the promotion and conservation of Spanish culture, Dr. Galván was awarded the Cruz de la Orden de Isabel La Católica in 1999 by then-King Juan Carlos I and the Order of Presidential Merit by then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2006. Likewise, in 2004 he received a Doctorate (Honoris Causa) in Humanities from the Aquinas University in Legaspi Albay—presently the University of Sto. Tomás in Albay.

Leovino Ma. Garcia served as the first lay Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences (1988–94) and as the first Dean of the School of Humanities (2000–07) of the Ateneo de Manila University. He has been teaching philosophy for the past forty-five years. His field of expertise is Contemporary French Philosophy, especially the philosophies of Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas. He has applied Ricoeur's hermeneutics in the interpretation of contemporary Philippine paintings and Philippine antique maps. In 2010, he edited the third edition of Carlos Quirino's Philippine Cartography.