Frances Cruz is a PhD student in the Department of Literature at the University of Antwerp and the Department of Political Science at the University of Gent. Her current project involves tracing the colonial and securitized roots of Muslim representation in the Philippines through the digital textual analyses of historical newspapers and contemporary print and social media. This project and her policy-related work as the co-convenor of the Decolonial Studies Program at the University of the Philippines’ Center for Integrative and Development Studies have driven her interest in decolonial, intercultural and linguistic policies.