A New Perspective on Puerto Rico

Santiago Ortiz and Meléndez-Badillo hope to put UW–Madison at the forefront of discussions of Puerto Rican history and politics. Althea Dotzour

The new Puerto Rican Studies Hub at UW–Madison launched in October. In addition to public programming, it will fund a pair of postdoctoral fellowships and support a cohort of six students for a new mentorship program. To strengthen partnerships beyond the university, it also plans to award grants to community, cultural, scholarly, and artistic initiatives connected to Puerto Rico and its diasporas.

The hub’s founding is timely, says Aurora Santiago Ortiz, assistant professor of gender and women’s studies and Chicanx/e and Latinx/e studies, who has spearheaded it along with associate history professor Jorell Meléndez-Badillo.

“We see changes in migration patterns, in that there are many Puerto Rican communities outside the major metropolitan centers and throughout the Midwest,” Santiago Ortiz says.

The first of its kind in the Midwest, the Puerto Rican Studies Hub was made possible by a $3 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. At a time when ethnic studies programs are under threat around the country, Meléndez-Badillo says, he hopes it puts UW–Madison at the forefront of discussions of Puerto Rican history and politics.

“We want it to be a place for connecting folks, not only in the Midwest, but nationally and internationally.”

Published in the Spring 2026 issue