Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts
University of the Philippines Diliman
Dr. Oscar T. Serquiña, Jr. is Acting Chair of the DSCTA
May 1, 2023
Starting May 1, Assistant Professor Oscar T. Serquiña, Jr., PhD is Acting Chair of the Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts.
He was selected by the Department during its Faculty Meeting on March 13. The 16th Head of the DSCTA, Serquiña will serve until 2024. He succeeded Dr. Sir Anril P. Tiatco, who was appointed Assistant Vice President for Public Affairs on February 22, 2023.
As the Acting Chair, he is committed to upholding the integrity of the DSCTA as a vital institution in the ecology of communicative and performative knowledge and practice in the country and the region. Serquiña is also reaffirming the DSCTA’s commitment to upholding academic excellence and spearheading transformative research projects, creative works, public services, and extension programs. As the DSCTA turns 65 next year, he intends to shepherd a series of projects that will honor the institution’s past, reckon with its present, and prime its institutional future.
He teaches courses in rhetoric and performance studies. He co-developed the PhD in Performance Studies program, the first of its kind in the Philippines and arguably in the Southeast Asian Region. A recipient of institutional awards such as the UP Centennial Professorial Chair, the UP International Publications Award, and the One UP Professorial Chair Award, Serquiña has also received several research grants from the University including the PhD Incentive Award and the Academic Program Improvement Grant.
He earned his PhD from the University of Melbourne through a Melbourne Research Scholarship, and received various fellowships from the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore (2013), Sciences Po-Paris (2014), the National Library of Australia (2018), and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies of the University of Michigan (2019). He was also a writing fellow for poetry at the UST National Writers Workshop (2009) and the Silliman University National Writers Workshop (2010), as well as for criticism at the De La Salle University’s KRITIKA National Workshop on Art and Cultural Criticism (2012) and the Ateneo de Manila University’s Kritika Kultura Criticism Workshop (2015). His essays have appeared in Performance Research, Theatre Research International, Humanities Diliman, Kritika Kultura, Philippine Studies, the Philippine Political Science Journal, and the Philippine Humanities Review.
Serquiña has an MA degree in Comparative Literature and a BA degree in Speech Communication (magna cum laude) from UP Diliman.
