The Center for Puerto Rican Studies invites applications for the 2025-2026 cohort of the CENTRO Research Fellows Program. This program convenes scholars, writers, and faculty in a cohort model that responds to an annual theme. The fellowships are held for one year (August 2025-July 2026). Fellows 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
We invite applications from scholars in all fields of study and disciplines, including creative writing and visual arts.
Qualifications
Hybrid Fellows:
We will select up to five hybrid fellows and will award each $25k
- Open to researchers and artists working on the annual theme who are unable to relocate to New York City for the duration of the fellowship year
- PhD is not required, but fellows must have extensive background in Puerto Rican Studies.
Artist-In-Residence:
We will select up to one artist researcher-in-residence and will be awarded $75k
- Open to artists, of all disciplines, working on the annual theme
- PhD is not required, but fellows must have extensive background in Puerto Rican Studies.
- Must be in residence at CENTRO in New York City for the duration of the 2025-2026 academic year
Dissertation Fellows:
We will select up to two dissertation fellows and will award each $25k
- Must be ABD (all but dissertation) in a related discipline by July 1, 2025
- Can be hybrid or in person at CENTRO in New York City
- One of the 3 reference letters must come from the dissertation advisor
- May be hybrid or in residence (in-residence requires a minimum of 3 on site days per week)
How to Apply
Please submit the following through Submittable:
- Cover letter describing related qualifications, experience, and proposed research activities
- Current CV
- Writing sample related to the position (20-25 double spaced pages) or artist portfolio
- One page course proposal (brief course description and selected readings)
- Contact information for 3 professional references
To apply, please fill out an application here.
f you have any questions about these positions, please email programs@centropr.app.
Description: CENTRO Press and Lost and Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative jointly call for applications for the Diasporican Archives Graduate Research Fellowship. We will award up to two fellowships of $3,000 each to two graduate students currently enrolled at CUNY. The awardees will conduct research at CENTRO’s Archives to edit a chapbook with original research and unpublished archival materials. Fellows will have the support of an ad hoc group of advisors composed of members of both CENTRO and Lost and Found. Successful chapbooks will be co-published as part of CENTRO Press’ Diasporican Archives Chapbook Series and Lost and Found.
Application Deadline: March 21, 2025
Goals: To incentivize publication of literary materials from CENTRO’s Archive with a rigorous academic framing; to keep CENTRO’s archive alive and dynamic; to make diasporic Puerto Rican literature easily available to students, teachers, professors, researchers, and readers everywhere.
Funding Amount: $3,000 (+ Publication costs, if applicable), disbursed in two installments.
Duration of fellowship: April to September 2025 (the Archives will be closed in July)
Eligibility: This fellowship is restricted to Masters and Doctoral students currently enrolled at a CUNY institution and who will continue to be enrolled for the duration of the fellowship.
Conditions:
- The proposed project should focus on materials held at CENTRO’s Archives. We are looking specifically for students interested in researching materials from the following collections:
- Jesús Colón Papers
- Clara Colón Papers
- Erasmo Vando Rodríguez Papers
- Emelí Vélez de Vando Papers
- Graciany Archilla Miranda Papers
- Juan Flores Papers,
- Miguel Algarín Papers
- Juan Avilés Collection,
- Ana Gloria San Antonio Papers,
- Victor Fernández Fragoso Papers,
- Elba Cabrera Papers,
- Juan González Papers
- Blase Camacho Souza Papers
Projects focusing on other collections will be considered but will need prior approval before submitting the application. If you wish to propose work with a different collection, please reach out to the Editor at centrops@hunter.cuny.edu
- Fellows must commit to a minimum of 10 visits to the Archives from April-September 2025.
- At the end of the summer, the awardees must submit a report with the findings of the research conducted with the support of the fellowship.
- The awardees must submit to the advisors and Editors a final version of the chapbook proposal by the end of October 2025.
- Fellows who fail to meet the minimum of visits to the archive and don’t submit a successful proposal will have to return the award.
- CENTRO Press and Lost and Found do not commit to publishing the work if the quality of the research and final proposal do not meet the Press’ standards. The joint Editorial team will carefully consider the chapbook proposal and evaluate the merits and viability of the project together with the awardees’ fellowship advisors.
Deliverables:
- A chapbook proposal. CENTRO Press and Lost and Found commit to responding to the awardee within one month of submission, after which period, if the proposal is not accepted, the awardee can submit it to other presses.
- If the chapbook proposal resulting from the summer research is accepted, a chapbook with the archival materials worked with during the time of the fellowship will be edited and published as part of CENTRO’s Diasporican Archives Chapbook series and will also be part of the Lost and Found Catalog.
Application Process: Applicants must apply using the following link. Applications will not be accepted by email. The application consists of: 1. a project description specifying the author or topic of research and sketching out the intended publication project, including a brief paragraph justifying the merits of the project; 2. a work plan for the time spent in person at the archive; 3. and a CV.
Applicants will be notified of the results by mid-April.
For any questions, you can write to the Editor at centrops@hunter.cuny.edu
About the Center for Puerto Rican Studies
The Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) at Hunter College, City University of New York, is a research institute dedicated to the study and interpretation of the Puerto Rican experience in the United States by producing and disseminating relevant interdisciplinary research and collecting, preserving, and providing access to archive and library resources that document their history and culture. CENTRO seeks to link scholarship with social action and political debates, and contribute to the enrichment of Puerto Rican studies.
CENTRO is dedicated to the comprehensive collection of data, graphic arts, and library and archival resources that document the history and legacy of Puerto Ricans in the United States, to the study of critical and relevant social issues and conditions affecting this culturally diverse nation, for the purpose of promoting effective community and public sector interventions, and supporting the intellectual and educational advancement of young scholars.
CENTRO's Puerto Rican Diaspora Archives contain more than 5,000 cubic feet of materials and include documents from artists, writers, politicians, activists, and other prominent community figures and organizations. The archives document the diversity of individuals and communities that reside in the city and have sought to focus their efforts on historically Puerto Rican enclaves such as the Lower East Side (Loisaida), East Harlem (El Barrio), the South Bronx, and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In addition, it houses the records of the Offices of the Government of Puerto Rico in the United States, which record the migration and working conditions of Puerto Ricans from the early 1930s until the closing of their offices in the mid-1990s, and document the formation of Puerto Rican communities in neighborhoods throughout the Northeast, Chicago, and Florida, with a special concentration in New York City.
About Hunter College
Located in the heart of Manhattan, Hunter is the largest college in the City University of New York (CUNY) system. Founded in 1870, it is also one of the oldest public colleges in the country and famous for a student body that is as diverse as the city itself. Most Hunter students are the first in their families to attend college and many go on to top professional and graduate programs, winning Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships, Mellon fellowships, National Institutes of Health grants, and other competitive honors. More than 23,000 students currently attend Hunter, pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in more than 170 areas of study. The 1,700 full- and part-time members of Hunter’s faculty are unparalleled. They receive prestigious national grants, contribute to the world's leading academic journals, and play major roles in cutting-edge research. They are fighting cancer, formulating public policy, expanding our culture, enhancing technology, and more.