Cindy Cruz-Cabrera

Cindy is an educator, gender specialist, writer, and pianist.

She is the Senior Gender and Development Officer at the Gender Office of the University of the Philippines Diliman (UPDGO).

She is a faculty member at the UP College of Mass Communication - Department of Broadcast Communication, and teaches SOGIE and Media.

She is an Associate Editor of the Diliman Gender Review, an academic journal at UP Diliman. She is also a host of DZUP GENDERadyo and a two-time Gandingan ng Kababaihan Award Winner at the 2019 and 2020 Gandingan Multi-Media Awards.

Pursuits through the years include educational therapy, literacy project consultancy, storytelling and literacy campaigns for urban poor and street children, gender and literacy work for grassroots women, and gender and development mainstreaming, education, and organizing in the academe.

She does commissioned writing once in a while and has done work for Petron, Ayala Corporation, Landbank, Department of Agriculture, and the University of the Philippines, among others. She wrote and developed the ADFIAP international award-winning 2013 sustainability report of the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP). She was also commissioned by the Cultural Center of the Philippines to write the CCP Safe Space Handbook (2023).

Cindy studied grade school at Assumption Antipolo and high school at the UP Integrated School. She completed her degrees in BSE English Literature and Language Teaching and MA Women and Development Studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

She is now taking her PhD in Media Studies at the UP College of Mass Communication. Research interests include media, gender, space, subjectivity, literacy, and music in the margins. She has presented her research studies at local and international conferences.

She was a fellowship awardee at the KRITIKA 2016 National Workshop on Art and Cultural Criticism for a paper on the political economy of subjectivity in Philippine underground rock music.

Cindy is classically trained in piano and has 7 years of music studies that culminated in a Lucia Francisco scholarship awarded by the UP College of Music when she was 10 years old.

She has since entertained piano pursuits purely for her pleasure, and writes about music in the margins on occasion. She has gone on to become involved in the Philippine underground rock music scene and protest music scene.

She manages rock bands Datu's Tribe and Plagpul.

[email protected] / [email protected]

  • Work
    • University of the Philippines
  • Education
    • University of the Philippines Diliman