Here is a call for the Rooted + Relational CENTRO Research Associate Program 2025-2026, housed at The Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO). CENTRO invites applications from scholars in all fields of study and disciplines, including creative writing and visual arts. The central theme for the 2025-2026 cohort is “Boricuas In Relation.” [A PhD in related disciplines required.] Research Associates will be required to be in-residence at CENTRO during the tenure of the award. The deadline for applications is June 1, 2025, at 11:59pm (EST).
Description: The Center for Puerto Rican Studies invites applications for the 2025-2026 cohort of the CENTRO Research Associate Program. This program convenes scholars, writers, and faculty in a cohort model that responds to an annual theme.Research Associate positions are held for one year (August 2025-July 2026). Research Associates will spend their time at CENTRO working on a specific research project and will be required to attend weekly seminar meetings, as well as additional workshops, and public events.
Theme (2025-2026) Boricuas In Relation
El Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños—CENTRO—The Center for Puerto Rican Studies, is the oldest and largest university-based research institute, library, and archive exclusively dedicated to the Puerto Rican experience in the United States. It was founded in 1973 by a coalition of students, faculty, and activists to support the fledgling field of Puerto Rican Studies in the City University of New York and to promote access to higher education by those of Puerto Rican descent. At the heart of these founders’ mission was the need for scholarly analysis of Puerto Ricans’ presence in the United States and the systemic forces that have subjugated and marginalized them within American society. In the present, we continue expanding our efforts to collect, preserve, and provide access to archival and library resources documenting the history and culture of Puerto Ricans. We do so in broad and inclusive ways and encourage interdisciplinary research into new emerging fields of study and phenomena that are traditionally invisible to researchers, as well as emerging issues that are dramatically changing our lives and ways of living today.
The 2025-2026 theme, Boricuas in Relation, invites researchers to engage with the phenomenon of Boricua archipelagic and diasporic community formation with other racial and ethnic groups. Boricuas have long developed and sustained political, social, kinship, creative, labor, and spiritual practices with multiple communities across the United States and beyond. We are interested in works that examine the experience and impact of migration, language, assimilation, cultural, and linguistic resilience and the connections between Puerto Ricans and other racial and ethnic groups.
The group will be asked to consider Boricua relations with Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, and/or other communities. The theme of Boricuas in Relation attends to the lived experiences and histories of Puerto Ricans in the archipelago and the diaspora and builds on existing critical scholarship while engaging in new directions within and beyond Puerto Rican Studies. Overall, this theme asks: what can we learn from the complex and overlapping relationships that Puerto Ricans have across global geographies and specific cities, sites and communities? What do we owe one another as we strive for political and cultural decolonization, self-determination and liberation, and anti-racism in our communities? These questions, and others will guide our discussions during this year-long seminar, where we will be considering different uses of the archive and explore how these spaces, collections, and practices can be transformed through a decolonial, feminist, and queer lens.
Possible Topics:
- Puerto Rico and other US territories
- Puerto Rican, Black, and women of color feminisms
- Radical solidarity movements
- New migration patterns
- Puerto Rico and the broader Hispanophone Caribbean
- Puerto Rico and the Anglophone Caribbean
- Puerto Rico and the Francophone Caribbean
- Puerto Rico and the African, Arab, European, and Indian World
- Asian presence in Puerto Rico
- Spiritual and religious practices
- Puerto Ricans in the media
- Food and culinary fusions
- Dance and movement
- Music and Sonic relations
- Cross cultural care work
- Collaborative artistic practices
- Linguistics and Anthropolitical Linguistics
- Mapping and cartographies
- Placemaking and community building
- Education
- Legal studies
- Urban developments
- Labor and activist movements
For further information (qualifications, process, timeline, compensation, etc.) see https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/opportunities/rooted-relational-centro-research-associate-program-2025-2026/