Presentation Session I

This presentation engages pakasaritaan, an Ilokano-rooted storytelling approach guiding a study on the educational persistence of Filipino college students who have experienced gender-based violence. Research on campus interpersonal violence often centers harm, risk, and institutional response. While these perspectives remain important, they can obscure the ways survivors continue, adapt, and persist within and beyond these experiences.

Grounded in Pin[a/x]yist thought and counterstory traditions, pakasaritaan honors storytelling as relational knowledge – shaped by memory, community, and ancestral ways of understanding survival. Rather than isolating individual experiences, this approach invites narratives that hold complexity, survivance, and cultural meaning in relation to one another.

This session reflects on the theoretical grounding and methodological design of pakasaritaan while inviting dialogue about the possibilities and responsibilities of culturally rooted survivor research within higher education contexts.