Maria F. Mangahas is Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of the Philippines, Diliman. She has a PhD. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge (2001), and MA in Anthropology from the University of the Philippines Diliman (1994). Coastal and small-scale fishing communities had been an area of research since 1987-88. Long term fieldwork sites are Batanes and Samal Island, Davao Gulf. The ethnographic themes she has explored center on traditional fishing culture and the community economy, and on impoverishment and sharing, as well as tradition and identity born out of the interaction and circulation of people ('indigenous' and migrants). From 2009 she looked into the phenomenon of digitized 'scandals' and the culture of media piracy in the Philippines, including the unauthorized circulation of pirated DVDs in response to current events as a form of alternative media. More recent research undertakings have been into the history of anthropology in the Philippines, and investigating the apparent absence of the maritime or archipelagic perspective in Philippine Anthropology. Her publications and papers have been on indigenous coastal resource management, 'gear conflicts' and changing seascapes, collective fishing technology, notions of 'luck' and leadership, the rural as 'frontier', digital piracy as alternative media, and maritime anthropology in the Philippines. She was President of the Ugnayang Pang-Aghamtao Inc. (Anthropological Association of the Philippines) in 2014-2017, and is currently Editor of its official journal, Aghamtao.