M. Cesar “Mac” Macuja Elizalde

M. Cesar “Mac” Macuja Elizalde (they/he) is a native of Manila, Philippines. They received their B.A. in Anthropology and Classics from Skidmore College in 2023. Mac’s interests follow the interdisciplinary use of history, religious studies, literature, and archaeology to investigate peoples’ interaction, conception, and relationship with the sea in various periods and cultural contexts. Owing to their identity as a Mestizo Filipino of Hispanic heritage, they are especially interested in impact of colonialism on our relationship with the sea, disruptions to indigenous maritime trade, the spread of religion, and the processes of maritime warfare and piracy; areas they hope to pursue through underwater archaeological methodology. Their prior fieldwork consists of excavation in Colonial North American and Filipino sites, as well as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) research in Central America and Europe. As part of undergraduate GIS coursework, they received certification as an FAA Part-107 Remote Pilot in Command in 2022. For their undergraduate senior thesis, they performed a QGIS analysis of Samian-ware pottery in Roman Britain. Mac is excited to begin complicating our understanding of the past, especially in the reconstruction of histories silenced in the historical record.