After undergraduate studies at the University of the Philippines, he served as the archivist of the Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Filipiniana Research Center.
[3] He later served as an archivist processing records of the Culion Leprosarium, a U.S. colonial institution for the segregation of individuals with Hansen's disease.
[13] He further explored the concept of "archival diasporas" through a study of the dispersal of anthropological and ethnographic photographs by Dean C. Worcester, a U.S. Colonial Administrator and academic.
[17] In 2021, Dr. Punzalan was contracted as an expert evaluator for the Council on Library and Information Resources Digitizing Hidden Collections grant program.
"[20] In 2023, the Society of American Archivists (SAA) named Punzalan as a distinguished Fellow of the Society, the "highest honor bestowed on individuals by SAA," in recognition of his "diverse experience and his work as both a professional archivist and an educator enables him to look at archival issues in new ways, question theories, posit ideas on how to move forward, and lead collaborators, colleagues, and students to new insights.