More than a year ago, Dr. Godiva Eviota-Rivera organized a research group at MSU Marawi to write about the Marawi Siege. Dr. Rogelio Bayod later joined the team as the lead researcher. Dr. Rivera recruited two other colleagues, Atty. Aurora Lyn Racmat and Prof. Omera Serad. The team found it important to document the experiences of the people of Marawi, including the faculty and students of MSU, during the actual conflict. Dr. Bayod argued that these stories usually do not come out of the media. For this reason, a scholarly work is critical. The collaboration resulted in the paper "Narratives of resilience and solidarity during the Marawi crisis: Preserving Matawi's Culture of Peace" published in the SES Journal in 2023. The paper is well written and provides a strong theoretical foundation as well as hard evidence. In this way, it's no surprise that the same has been cited by an outstanding scholar in Peace Studies at Hiroshima University in Japan. What this proves is the competence and power of collaboration in research, a culture that must be pursued if academics are to make a real difference in society.
