Benedict Salazar Olgado, PhD

Dr. Benedict “Bono” Salazar Olgado is an Associate Professor at the University of the Philippines School of Library and Information Studies. His work is concerned with the politics of information infrastructures, particularly how documentation systems shape what becomes possible in public life. Much of his research asks what happens when projects of truth, justice, and accountability become entangled with databases, standards, and computational systems that do not merely record the world but participate in producing it.

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A major strand of this research examines the datafication of transitional justice. He studies databases as infrastructures of memory, tracing how data, expertise, and documentary practices shape the ways societies contend with violence. Drawing particularly from archival studies, science and technology studies, and human-computer interaction, he has published in leading venues across these fields.

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Olgado is the founding director of the Publics, Archives, and Data Lab (PANDA Lab), which serves as a home for his research on the relationships among documentary infrastructures, technology, and public life. Since 2026, he has also served as Deputy Director for Research of the UP Intelligent Systems Center, where he leads an interdisciplinary research agenda on human-centered public information systems. This agenda approaches intelligent systems not simply as technical artifacts but as forms of public infrastructure that mediate how people encounter institutions, access information and services, and exercise rights. He asks how such systems might be designed and governed to be more accessible, trustworthy, and responsive to the publics they are meant to serve. In recognition of his contributions to research and scholarship, Olgado was conferred the distinction of University Social Scientist by the University of the Philippines.

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His scholarship is closely tied to his practice as a human rights defender. For much of the past decade, he has worked on the infrastructures through which various groups have documented the Philippines’ so-called “war on drugs.” He previously served as Senior Documentalist and Asia-Pacific Programmes Manager at HURIDOCS (Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems), supporting human rights organizations internationally while helping develop approaches to documentation, data governance, and emerging technologies. Since August 2026, he has served as Director for Documentation, Archives, and Memorialization of the Philippine Truth Commission, where he leads the development of documentary and archival systems through which the Commission builds its truth record and stewards its documentary legacy beyond its time-bound mandate.

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Olgado began his career in audiovisual archives and was the founding director of the National Film Archives of the Philippines, now the Philippine Film Archive. There, he worked on landmark restorations including Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (1975/2013) and On My Way to India, Consciousness I Reached China (1968/2013). His engagement with archives has since moved beyond film preservation into art, curatorial, and critical practice. He consults on archives and collection management for institutional and private art collections, advises artists’ archives including those of Danilo Dalena, At Maculangan, and Roberto Chabet, and collaborates with artists on the possibilities of archival engagement and intervention. He has programmed films for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and served as editor of the NANG issue “Archival Imaginaries” (2021) and the Plaridel issue “Philippine Cinema and the Archives” (2018). He is currently working on his book, Reconfiguring the Empire of Memory: Studying the Entanglements of Filipino Archival Practices, Artistic Interventions, and Data Work.

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Olgado received his PhD in Informatics, with a Graduate Emphasis in Global Studies, from the University of California, Irvine, where he was co-advised by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Roderic Crooks. He holds an MA in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a BA in Communication and Social Sciences from Ateneo de Manila University.

Bono loves panda bears.