Ricky Punzalan’s journey toward reparative curation

For University of Michigan School of Information associate professor and Museum Studies program director, Ricky Punzalan, questions of care, power and repair aren’t abstract. They are lived. 

Born in the Philippines in the mid-1970’s, against the backdrop of dictatorship, Punzalan grew up surrounded by intense poverty, state violence, and an oppressive government intolerant of protest and dissent. The police and the military wielded so much power, they tortured and killed with impunity. There was corruption at every layer of government. 

Reading became his refuge. 

“I retreated into school and books,” he says. “Growing up gay, I got teased a lot, I didn’t like male dominated sports and I just never felt comfortable. But I found safety in studying and reading.” 

His early relationship with books set the foundation for Punzalan’s lifelong commitment to libraries, archives, museums and the preservation of cultural memory. He later earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees in library science and archives from the University of the Philippines (UP). 

While serving as faculty at the UP, Punzalan had a chance encounter with UMSI professor emerita Margaret Hedstrom at a conference. Hedstrom encouraged Punzalan to pursue his PhD at the University of Michigan School of Information, a suggestion that changed his research path for good. 

At UMSI, Punzalan studied the Dean C. Worcester photographic collection, a colonial archive documenting people across the Philippines between 1890 and 1913. Punzalan’s dissertation examined what happens when collections like this are digitized and made publicly accessible. 

“Michigan has long been known in the Philippines, partly because of its historical ties to the American colonial government,” Punzalan says. “Michigan students, alumni, and faculty once held colonial posts in the Philippines, and archival materials related to that period are housed here. That connection made it a fitting place for me to study.”

After earning his PhD at UMSI in 2013, Punzalan joined the University of Maryland’s iSchool faculty before returning to UMSI as a faculty member with tenure in 2020. His work has been broadly recognized across the archives profession: he is a distinguished fellow of the Society of American Archivists (SAA), has served on multiple SAA committees, was elected to the SAA Council and helped advise the Library of Congress on community collaboration models for digital stewardship. 

Since joining UMSI, Punzalan has been nationally and internationally recognized for his work on ReConnect/ReCollect: Reparative Connections to Philippine Collections at the University of Michigan. This is a multi-year project he co-directs with U-M History and Asian Languages and Cultures professor Deirdre de la Cruz, in collaboration with faculty, students, as well as curators, librarians, archivists and collections managers on campus, as well as Philippine partners. This group explores how universities and museums can ethically return or co-steward materials. 

Since starting this effort in 2021, Punzalan has co-led multiple visits to the Philippines to help repair the damaging colonial history of the U-M Philippine collections and design new models for engaging community members and scholars with the wealth of Filipino history stored at U-M. Last August, the ReConnect/ReCollect project received SAA’s Council Exemplary Service Award for this outstanding work. 

“When I came back to UMSI, I realized I could finally do what I’d always wanted to do with my dissertation and take the collection back to communities in the Philippines,” he says. “Institutions everywhere were reflecting on their colonial roots. We were seeing the Black Lives Matter movement, the responses to the murder of George Floyd, and a global reckoning around race and power. I thought, why are we studying this elsewhere when it’s happening here? Why not start with our own university and its role in colonialism, and approach it from a reparative angle?”

Punzalan’s reparative approach is the foundation of the ReConnect/ReCollect project and its centering of ethics, reciprocity and relationship building.

“I’m more interested in relationships,” Punzalan says. “How do we build trust with communities? Community members are scholars in their own right. They know more about the people, the cultures and the histories captured in these photographs than anyone else ever could. The more we listen and collaborate, the more we learn about what we hold and how to do better.” 

So far, the ReConnect/ReCollect project has led to community consultations, return visits and the development of a toolkit to help other institutions begin this work. Outside of this project, Punzalan teaches courses in archives and museum studies at UMSI. 

“The best part of teaching is that spark of curiosity and creativity to do things differently, to imagine archives and museum work otherwise,” he says. “It’s when students encounter a new idea and start reimagining how institutions can do better.”

Outside of his research and teaching, Punzalan loves Michigan’s “changing seasons” and various activities like apple picking in the fall and skiing in the winter. He also loves hosting dinner parties with friends, visiting scholars, and relationship building with the Filipino community in Ann Arbor and the state. 

“ I think, again, it’s about relationships,” he says. “Building those relationships and sustaining them with people.” 

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Learn more about Ricky Punzalan by visiting his UMSI faculty profile and personal website.

Read about the ReConnect/ReCollect project by visiting their website and reading about the initiative.