Nerissa S. Balce

Nerissa S. Balce serves as Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at Stony Brook University, with additional affiliations in the Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Media Art Culture and Technology Advanced Graduate Certificate Program, and Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Her scholarly work bridges cultural studies, visual anthropology, and postcolonial theory with a focus on U.S.-Philippine relations.

Her research interests center on race, gender, and state violence within American imperial contexts, particularly examining visual culture and popular representations. Balce's scholarship explores how photographic archives document colonial and neocolonial violence, with special attention to Duterte's Philippines and historical U.S. imperialism. She investigates the intersections of bodily representation, citizenship, and resistance through frameworks of necropolitics and visual sovereignty.

Analysis of Balce's publications reveals consistent engagement with visual documentation of state violence, particularly through her curatorial work on Dark Lens / Lente ng Karimlan, which examines Filipino atrocity photography during Duterte's drug war. Her scholarly trajectory demonstrates deepening theoretical engagement with fascism studies, evolving from analyses of historical American imperialism to contemporary authoritarian regimes, while maintaining focus on visual evidence and bodily politics.

• 2018 Best Book award in Cultural Studies from the Filipino Section of the Association for Asian American Studies
• Finalist for the best book in social sciences for the 2018 Philippine National Book Awards

As co-curator of the Dark Lens project, Balce has fostered international scholarly-artistic collaboration between Filipino photographers and North American academics. Her teaching encompasses graduate and undergraduate courses on Asian American literature and popular culture, and she has presented lectures at numerous institutions including Cornell University, UC Berkeley, and Ateneo de Manila University. Balce actively participates in digital forums addressing U.S. empire, anti-Asian racism, and Filipino immigrant experiences.

Her work with the Dark Lens project represents a significant collaborative initiative bringing together Manila-based photographers and international scholars to document state violence through visual media. This project exemplifies her commitment to bridging academic research with artistic practice and human rights advocacy.