DLSU Department of Political Science and Development Studies full professor Dr. Cleo Anne A. Calimbahin was recently elected as the fourth president of the Yuchengco Center by its Board of Trustees, effective May 1, 2026. 

Hosted by DLSU and sponsored by the Yuchengco Group of Companies, the Center aims to be a significant thought leader on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, dedicated to the research and expansion of globalization, regional security, foreign relations, governance, democratization, and human security. 

Calimbahin’s research focuses on election administration, corruption, and democracy studies. She completed her PhD in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a Fulbright Fellow. She earned an MSc in International Politics of Asia and Africa from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London.  

She was recently a Senior Research Fellow at The Australian National University (ANU) Philippines Institute. Her other affiliations and fellowships include being a research associate with RAND in Washington, DC; a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Asia Pacific Research Center (APARC) as well as at the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies (IHEID) in Geneva; and a visiting research fellow for the Institute for Developing Economies (IDE-Jetro) in Japan. 

She is a member of the International Editorial Advisory Board of Asian Politics and Policy (Wiley-Blackwell) and a committee member of the American Political Science Association (APSA). Likewise, she is an Advisory Council member of the Women in Southeast Asian Social Sciences and a Fellow and former board member (2022-2025) of the Social Weather Stations (SWS). 

Her publications include a co-edited book, Patronage Democracy in the Philippines: Clans, Clients and Competition in Local Elections, published by the Ateneo De Manila Press. The book received the 2024 Outstanding Book Award in the Social Sciences from the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST). She has a forthcoming co-edited volume, Beyond Geopolitics: The Philippines in the New Marcos Era, published by ISEAS Publishing, Singapore. 

Under her leadership, she seeks to promote the Yuchengco Center’s policy advocacy through research, convening forums for dialogue, hosting conferences, publications, training, and other activities that deal with social, economic, and political issues in the country and the Asian region.

She also aims to strengthen the Center’s partnerships with various national and international networks, toward proposing  actionable solutions to long-standing, complex problems in the Philippines and Southeast Asia.