Weena Gera is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu, and Convenor of the Urban Studies Program of the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at the ANU Philippines Institute. Weena obtained her PhD in International Development from the Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University (2009) where she also received her MA (2006) in the same field. She was awarded the JSPS-UNU postdoctoral research fellowship at the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability in Tokyo and the Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science of Tokyo University (2012-2014); and the OeAD-Ernst Mach Grants-ASEA-UNINET research fellowships at the Institute of Forest, Environmental and Natural Resource Policy at BOKU in Vienna (2016-2017) and the Vienna University of Technology (2022). She is recipient of the 2018 Gro Brundtland Award for Women in Sustainable Development; the 2019 Bernd Rode Award by ASEA-UNINET for her work on ecosystem services in the ASEAN; and the UP Scientist 1 rank under the UP Scientific Productivity System (2020-2022) as distinction for meritorious academic contributions. Weena has also served as Vice Chancellor for Administration (Feb-2019 to Jan-2022) at UP Cebu.