Dr Jayeel Serrano Cornelio is the director of the Development Studies Program at the Ateneo de Manila University. He is the principal investigator on the Ateneo Disaster Preparedness Study, which investigates the experiences of various communities in the Visayas in meeting national risk reduction standards. As a co-investigator on Vote of the Poor 2016, a major study funded by the Institute of Philippine Culture, Dr Cornelio focused on vulnerable communities affected by Typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban.

Jayeel writes on religion and development. He edited the special issue of the Asian Journal of Social Science on religious philanthropy in Asia (2015). He is also the author of Being Catholic in the Contemporary Philippines: Young People Reinterpreting Religion (Routledge, 2016). He is now working on a new study on religious responses to climate change. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity and most recently a visiting scholar at the Divinity School of Chung Chi College, Chinese University of Hong Kong.