Research

The Faculty of Information and Communication Studies (FICS) advances interdisciplinary research at the intersections of communication, immersive technologies, creative practice, and intelligent systems. Grounded in rigorous scholarship and responsive to emerging societal challenges, our work examines how information, media, and technological infrastructures shape human experience, institutional life, and collective futures.

Human Communication and Experience in Intelligent, Immersive, and Transforming Worlds

The Faculty of Information and Communication Studies (FICS) advances an interdisciplinary research and creative agenda focused on understanding, designing, and critically examining communication and human experience within increasingly intelligent, immersive, interconnected, and transforming environments. The agenda investigates how humans, technologies, artificial and other-than-human agents, creative systems, and social institutions interact to shape communication, learning, culture, wellbeing, organizations, communities, and collective futures. It brings together research on adaptive artificial intelligence and cybernetic systems; distributed and more-than-human communication; immersive and spatial technologies; creative, embodied, technological, and ecological futures; and communicative interventions for inclusive digital and social transformation. Across these domains, FICS combines theoretical inquiry, empirical and computational research, creative practice, design and experimentation, and community-engaged scholarship to develop new knowledge, experiences, systems, and interventions that are human-centered, inclusive, ethical, sustainable, and responsive to the needs of the Philippines, the Global South, and an interconnected world.

Our research labs serve as collaborative intellectual spaces where faculty, students, and external partners co-develop research agendas, design innovative methodologies, and translate theory into practice. Through mentorship, experimentation, public engagement, and cross-sector collaboration, these units cultivate scholarship that is analytically robust, socially relevant, and oriented toward meaningful impact in local and global contexts.