Jeff obtained his Bachelor's degree in History from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, and his Master's degree in Japanese Studies from the University of the Philippines. He then became an Erasmus Mundus scholar at the Central European University (Hungary/Austria,) and University of Florence (Italy) where he earned an MA in History and MA in Historical Science respectively. He's also received an MA in Humanities from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Since 2015, he taught at the university level in the Philippines, where his primary areas of interest are modern history, colonial history, and urban history, material cultures, Japanese studies, and Philippine-Japan relations. In 2021, Jeff started the public history project YAMAN Digital History with the goal of digitizing and digitalizing Filipino colonial history and fostering a more collaborative and diverse approach to learning about and reflecting on the past. In 2023, he began teaching at a private university in Tokyo, focusing on contemporary Japanese history and on Japanese society, culture, and gender.