Esmeralda Fortunado-Sanchez is a founding member and president of the Philippine Association for the Study of Culture, History and Religion, Inc., since 2013. She is a former lecturer and researcher at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines, and founding chairman and two-time president of the Philippine Association for the Sociology of Religion. Her work has bridged ethnography and theology, including research on El Shaddai, the Filipino lay Catholic movement. For Catholics & Cultures, she is leading a group of Filipino researchers to explore the wide range of local practices that underlie Catholic life on the many islands of the Philippines. She coordinated the 2nd International Conference on Catholics & Cultures, "From Cradle to the Grave: Catholicism and Stages of Life in the Philippines," in January 2016.