Pamela Cajilig
Pamela Gloria Cajilig, PhD is a Senior Fellow of the Equity Initiative, a program supported by the Atlantic Institute and the China Medical Board that cultivates leaders working at the intersection of health equity, policy, and systems change in Asia. She is an applied anthropologist and a Professorial Lecturer at the University of the Philippines College of Architecture, where she teaches graduate courses on resilience, climate futures, and participatory design.
Her research and practice focus on the nexus of climate change, health, and disasters, with an emphasis on community-led, women-led, and justice-oriented approaches. She has led and collaborated on multi-country projects across Southeast Asia on themes including climate-resilient healthcare systems, locally-led humanitarianism, and inclusive disaster risk reduction. Recent work includes CAREscape: Climate-Adaptive Reimaginings for Enhancing Healthcare Spaces of the Future, a British Council–funded partnership with the University of Plymouth that engages artists, architects, and communities in speculative design to reimagine climate-resilient health facilities.
As Professorial Lecturer at the University of the Philippines, Pamela also mentors graduate students in architecture and design research, integrating research on community resilience, participatory design, and climate adaptation into teaching. She is an Associate with the World Wildlife Fund’s Environment and Disaster Management Program in Washington DC, and her contributions to participatory disaster management and climate-health research have been recognized by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Australian Government’s Women’s International Leadership Awards.
Through her work, she champions the centrality of grassroots knowledge, social justice, and interdisciplinary collaboration in addressing the converging crises of climate change, health inequities, and disasters.