Yarimar Bonilla

Faculty Leader

Yarimar Bonilla is Professor in the Department of Africana, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Hunter College and the PhD Program in Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment (2015), co-editor of Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm. In addition, Yarimar is a prominent public intellectual and a leading voice on Caribbean and Latin-X politics. She writes a monthly column in the Puerto Rican newspaper El Nuevo Día titled “En Vaivén,” is a regular contributor to publications such as The Washington Post, The Nation, Jacobin, and The New Yorker, and a frequent guest on National Public Radio and news programs such as Democracy Now! In addition, Professor Bonilla has a strong interest in the role of digital technologies within social movements and academic practice. She has theorized hashtag usage within the context of the Black Lives Matter movement and is a principal collaborator in the #PuertoRicoSyllabus project. Her current research—for which she was named a 2018-2020 Carnegie Fellow—examines the politics of recovery in Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria and the forms of political and social trauma that the storm revealed. Follow her on Twitter @YarimarBonilla