Founded in 1973 by a coalition of students, faculty, and activists, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College (centro)
is the largest university-based research institute, library, and archive dedicated to the Puerto Rican experience in the United States.
We provide support to students, scholars, artists, and members of the community at large across and beyond New York. We produce original research, films, books, and educational tools and are the home of The Centro Journal—the premiere academic journal of Puerto Rican Studies. Our aim is to create actionable and accessible scholarship to strengthen, broaden, and reimagine the field of Puerto Rican studies.
CENTRO'S Data Hub generates robust research and analysis using publicly available data, like the U.S. Census Bureau and other federal agencies to provide information to scholars, policy makers and the general public. Our interactive reports use data visualization tools and web maps to illustrate major changes within the Puerto Rican population. In recent years, the data hub has extended research priorities to Puerto Rico's ongoing economic crisis and post-disaster recovery. Our Hub offers a unique opportunity to connect and collaborate with outside researchers on investigations, publications, and events.
Rooted + Relational is a five year research initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation which seeks to reimagine the research agenda and scholarly and community impact of CENTRO in the US and beyond. This series of projects aims to make CENTRO a public facing, horizontal, decolonial feminist institute that opens new paths in academia and expands community-driven research that expands beyond the walls of the academy. This proposed project strategically links the center’s research agenda, data hub projects, media, arts and culture output, scholarly mentoring initiatives, and community partnerships by creating annual thematic structures that will address some of the most pressing social, political, and economic issues facing Puerto Rico and the diaspora. The goal is to create a unifying higher learning community at CENTRO that tends to the intellectual and cultural needs of our committed and diverse public.
Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the Bridging the Divides program seeks to convene a broad array of researchers, writers, thinkers, and creators from across Puerto Rico’s geographic communities for collaborative study about our collective future. Building on our 50-year legacy of collaborative and interdisciplinary research, the goal is to create benchmark publications, media products, and artistic projects that can help bridge our divides, create bridges of understanding, and forge new theoretical foundations, policy recommendations, and conceptual and material pathways to reimagine Puerto Rico’s future.
