February 13, 2024
IN PERSON AND VIRTUAL EVENT Join us for an enlightening conversation between guest speaker Dr. Raúl Santiago- Bartolomei, Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Planning, University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras, and Dr. Fernando Rivera, Director of the UCF Puerto Rico Research Hub. Dr. Santiago will discuss the challenges, solutions, and the broader impact on […]
November 27, 2023
With the nation’s first caucuses only a few months away, the issue of Puerto Rican statehood has become one of the latest topics of controversy among Republican candidates. In late October, the “Make America Great Again Inc.” SuperPAC endorsing Donald Trump shifted its campaign strategy to target fellow Republican candidate Ron DeSantis once again. The […]
October 12, 2023
On March 28, 2023, Puerto Rican governor Pedro Pierluisi announced a plan to renew Puerto Rico’s power grid through solar energy initiatives (AP News 3). Weakly maintained by a private company and devastated by storms like Hurricane Maria, the power grid is responsible for providing electricity to 3.2 million people (AP News 3). Pierluisi has […]
April 21, 2023
Since Puerto Rico’s economic crisis in 2006, the island’s housing market has faced a growing and evolving set of challenges. The widespread devastation of hurricanes, earthquakes, and natural disasters in general, severely worsened an already existing housing problem. Hurricane Irma and Maria alone damaged over 725,000 households, representing nearly 60% of all occupied housing units […]
July 8, 2020
Tell us about yourself in a nutshell. What would you say makes your work unique? I am an interdisciplinary visual artist and UCF Associate professor of studio art. What makes my art unique? I move between disciplines -drawing, sculpture, video and live performance- to best get my points across instead of only working in one […]
June 29, 2020
On Wednesday, June 24th, the University of Central Florida’s Puerto Rico Research Hub hosted a virtual conference, “In Times of Crisis: Puerto Rican Activism in Orlando.” The event featured Julie Torres, Ph.D., a Scholar-in-Residence for the Hub. Crisis, Torres argued, is a phrase that can overshadow the people most badly affected because others suffer, too. […]
April 13, 2020
Since we do not have direct flights to China, the Puerto Rican Secretary of Health, who has since resigned, maintained in early March that the Island was free of COVID-19. The recently dismissed state epidemiologist affirmed at the time that while there were cases in Italy, it was only because “they were nearby” China, not […]
April 3, 2020
Disasters such as floods, earthquakes, wildfires, and hurricanes, along with other humanitarian emergencies, continue to increase in frequency and impact. Indeed, a report by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters revealed that in 2018, there were 315 reported natural disasters affecting over 68.5 million people worldwide. These disasters resulted in the loss […]
