Bruno Anaya Ortiz pursues work at the intersection of legal studies, political theory, and colonial studies

Congratulations to PhD student, Bruno Anaya Ortiz, for becoming a Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies (BELS) Fellow for 2021-2022. Ortiz is a fifth-year student in the Rhetoric Department.

Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies (BELS) is characterized by a rich interdisciplinary approach that seeks to ground empirical analysis in sociolegal theory and embrace a broad range of methods, both quantitative and qualitative.

Ortiz's work is at the intersection of legal studies, political theory, and colonial studies. His dissertation analyzes Spanish-American identity formations in Mexico and the US. In Mexico, he analyzed how courts and the constitution define national identity in contradistinction to both ideas of “Indigenous peoples” and the “West.”