Charles R. Venator-Santiago, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Political Science with a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science and El Instituto: Institute for Latino/a, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies at the University of Connecticut, where he currently serves as Director of El Instituto. He is also the founding director of UConn’s Puerto Rican Studies Initiative for Community Engagement and Public Policy.
Dr. Venator-Santiago earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research and teaching focus on U.S. territorial law and policy, citizenship, public law, political and legal theory, and Latino and Puerto Rican politics. He is the author of Puerto Rico and the Origins of U.S. Global Empire: The Disembodied Shade (Routledge, 2015) and has published extensively on the history of U.S. citizenship and territorial policy.
His current work places particular emphasis on Puerto Ricans in Connecticut. Through the Puerto Rican Studies Initiative, he is developing a historical and demographic profile of Connecticut’s Puerto Rican community using demographic data, oral histories, archival collections, and partnerships with community-based organizations. The initiative seeks to document the economic, intellectual, cultural, and civic contributions of Puerto Ricans to Connecticut while producing research that can help inform public policy.
Dr. Venator-Santiago also directs several archival research projects examining citizenship and territorial status, including the Puerto Rico Citizenship Archives Project, the Puerto Rico Status Archives Project, and the American Samoa Nationality and Citizenship Archives Project.
