Stephen B. Acabado is Professor of Anthropology at UCLA. He is an anthropological archaeologist whose research examines Indigenous histories, agriculture, colonialism, and human-environment relations. His long-term research in Ifugao, northern Philippines, challenged the widely repeated claim that the Cordillera Rice Terraces are 2,000 years old. Archaeological evidence instead places their expansion within the last several centuries and connects the development of wet-rice farming with social and political changes during the Spanish colonial period. His research draws from archaeology, ethnography, ethnohistory, and spatial analysis and has taken him to the Philippines, Taiwan, Cambodia, and Morocco. Across these regions, he studies how communities shape landscapes, maintain food systems, respond to political and environmental change, and draw on local knowledge. Acabado also develops archaeological training and capacity-building programs and writes for public audiences about archaeology, food, heritage, climate, and Philippine history.

John Sherwin Felix is a food researcher and the founder of Lokalpedia, an online archive of Philippine foodways. His research has taken him across Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, where he documents ingredients, dishes, cooking methods, markets, farms, fishing communities, and the people who keep local food traditions going. He spends much of his time talking with farmers, fishers, cooks, vendors, and home cooks, learning how ingredients are grown, gathered, prepared, preserved, and shared. His work follows the connections between food and place, as well as the histories and memories carried through everyday meals. Through Lokalpedia, he records ingredients and practices that often receive little attention outside the communities where they are found. He is particularly interested in how local knowledge is passed from one generation to another and how changes in farming, fishing, markets, and eating habits affect what ends up on Filipino tables. His writing and research bring these stories to a wider audience while documenting the range of food traditions found across the Philippines.