When Aurora Santiago Ortiz talks about her work, one theme keeps surfacing: connection.
Santiago Ortiz grew up between Puerto Rico and New York City and began her career in documentary film and television. She saw filmmaking as a way to educate and develop critical consciousness, which led her to law school, where she worked with communities facing displacement.
She later worked for nonprofit organizations and in youth leadership development for the Puerto Rican government before discovering a passion for teaching. Now, as an assistant professor in UW–Madison’s Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and codirector of the Puerto Rican Studies Hub, she is bringing those experiences together to strengthen ties between Puerto Rico, the Puerto Rican diaspora, and Wisconsin.
The hub, which Santiago Ortiz directs with historian (and Bad Bunny collaborator) Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, launched in 2025 with a goal of bringing Puerto Rican Studies into conversation with the broader UW–Madison community.
“We really wanted to build bridges,” she says.
Some of those bridges are academic. The hub brings scholars to campus, supports graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and creates opportunities for researchers to share their work and develop new collaborations. Other bridges are constructed through cultural events. Last year, the hub broughtLos Pleneros de la Cresta, a Puerto Rican plena group to campus and cocurated Cuestiones Caribeñas/Caribbean Matters, an exhibition exploring Caribbean culture and identity.
The hub builds on decades of work to strengthen Puerto Rican Studies at UW–Madison while creating new connections between the university, Puerto Rican communities, and the broader public.
That includes creating opportunities for students to learn about Puerto Rico outside the classroom. Last summer, Santiago Ortiz taught a study-away course that brought students to the archipelago for two weeks. They visited feminist and antiracist organizations and spent a week working in a community archive in Vieques, a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico.
The experience laid the groundwork for future partnerships. Santiago Ortiz is now developing a community-based research course that will connect organizations in Madison with the Vieques archive.
For Santiago Ortiz, that means making room for different kinds of knowledge and different ways of participating. The hub is meant to be a place where students and scholars can learn, but also where artists, community organizations, and people who simply want to engage with Puerto Rican culture can find a place.
“I’m looking to bridge the gap between community and university,” she says. “You don’t have to be Puerto Rican to be part of the hub.”
