Efenita M. Taqueban teaches social anthropology, with interests in global political economy, human rights, and social suffering. Her masters thesis drew from the stories of induced abortion by mothers from an urban poor community in Manila. With focus on research and policy development, she serves as a legal advocate with the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center, a legal, research and policy institute working for the rights of indigenous peoples and rural poor communities to land, natural resources and environment.

She has particular interest in how critical political economic theory applies to acute social problems and how it frames an understanding of structural violence, and the nexus of power and inequity and its manifestations in community and individual realities of social suffering.

Global Political Economy, Human Rights, and Social Suffering

Philippines

• Taqueban, E. M. (2025). The infrastructure of land reclamation and imagining modernity in the Philippines. In D. S. Adhuri (Ed.), Merampas laut merampas hidup nelayan: Coastal and marine grabbing in Indonesia and the Philippines (pp. 73-110). Penerbit Palmerah Syndicate. National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN). 
• Hardon A, Dey T, Pakasi D, Taqueban EM, Hidayana I, Nichter M. Confronting the material and structural leakiness of plastics: insights from multi-sited ethnography in India, Indonesia and the Philippines. Cambridge Prisms: Plastics. 2025;3:e27. doi:10.1017/plc.2025.10022
• Hardon, A., Pakasi, D., Hidayana, I., Taqueban, E., Moyer, E., van Zeben, J., … Tan, M. L. (2025). Connecting the Dots: A Collaborative Ethnography of Plastic Leakages in Indonesia and the Philippines. Practicing Anthropology, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/08884552.2025.2536030
• Pathak, G., Nichter, M., Hardon, A., Moyer, E., Taqueban, E., Latkar, A., Simbaya, J., Pakasi, D., Love, J. (2023). Plastic pollution and the open burning of plastic wastes. Global Environmental Change, Volume 80, 102648.
• Taqueban, E.M. (2022). Book review: The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country from Corporate Greed By Robin Broad and John Cavanagh. Social Science Diliman, Volume 18 No 1, 88-91.
• Taqueban, E.M. (2021). Evacuees in their Own Land: Indigenous Peoples’ Struggle in the Bangsamoro. Quezon City: Legal Rights and Natural Resource Center. https://www.lrcksk.org/_files/ugd/dc2292_4c873eeb72244eef86656e610d68d26e.pdf
• Bernabe, R. and E.M. Taqueban. (2021). Situating the Belt Road Initiative within the Philippine Renewable Trajectory (Discussion Paper April 2021). Quezon City: Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center. https://www.lrcksk.org/_files/ugd/dc2292_6cbb0ba8e95747fc8df6ab4b2c4684f7.pdf
• Labog, P.N., Taqueban, E.M., and R.J. Roset (2020). Securing Indigenous Peoples’ Rights: A Review of the Philippine Human Security Framework and Its Impacts on Indigenous Peoples Right (Discussion Paper December 2020). Quezon City: Legal Rights and Natural Resource Center. https://www.lrcksk.org/_files/ugd/dc2292_d7221197839d4ee692f30e900b080c49.pd
• Hardon, A., Pell C., Taqueban, E.M. and M. Narasimhan (2019). Sexual and reproductive self care among women and girls: insights from ethnographic studies. BMJ 365: l1333.
• Taqueban, E.M. and J. Demigillo (2019). Brewing Tension: A Case Study of a Coffee Plantation in Indigenous Land. Quezon City: Legal Rights and Natural Resource Center. https://www.lrcksk.org/_files/ugd/dc2292_147336f0faf6464796bd54768c505b77.pdf
• Taqueban, E.M. (2018). Veiling and Lipstick in the City: Being Female, Young and Muslim in Urban Mindanao. Philippine Social Sciences Review. Volume 70, No. 2.
• Tan, M., Hardon, A. and E.M. Taqueban (Eds). (2018). Making Bodies Work: Young People’s Everyday Body Management in Urban Mindanao. Quezon City: University of Amsterdam-AISSR and UP Department of Anthropology.
• Taqueban, E.M. (2018). About the Fieldwork. In Tan, M., Hardon, A. and E.M. Taqueban (Eds), Making Bodies Work: Young People’s Everyday Body Management in Urban Mindanao. Quezon City: University of Amsterdam-AISRR and Department of Anthropology UP. Pp. (5-17).
• Taqueban, E.M. (February 7, 2018). Armed with Red Lipstick. Dispatches Cultural Anthropology. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1308-armed-with-red-lipstick
• Dacanay, N., Feranil, L., Silverio, R., and E.M. Taqueban. (2015). Cybercafes and Community ICT Training Centers: Empowering Migrant Workers in Thailand. In J. Proenza (Ed), Public Access ICT across Cultures. Massachusetts: MIT Press. Pp. 341-371.
• Taqueban, E.M. (2013). A Way Out in Eden: Maternal Health Crisis in Manila. Philippine Social Science Review 65/2: 1-43.
• Taqueban, E.M. (2013). Community Health Worker. In Barker, J., Harms, E., and J. Lindquist (Eds.), Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity. Hawai’i: University of Hawaii Press. Pp. 41-43.
• Taqueban, E.M. (2013). Taking Stock: A Survey of AIDS Response for MSM and TG People in the Philippines. Quezon City: Health Action Information Network and the United Nations Development Program.
• Taqueban, E.M. (2012). Salam: Of Dislocation, Marginality and Flexibility. Social Science Diliman 8/2 (Jul-Dec): 1-27.