Jose Atiles is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and the College of Law (by courtesy) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Crisis by Design: Emergency Powers and Colonial Legality in Puerto Rico (Stanford University Press, 2024), an interdisciplinary examination of law, emergency powers, and anticorruption mobilizations in Puerto Rico. Crisis by Design explores the Puerto Rico's recent history—from the 2006 public debt crisis and the 2016 government bankruptcy to the devastating hurricanes Irma and María, anticorruption protests, earthquakes, and the COVID-19 pandemic—arguing that these crises are intrinsic to the colonial structure rather than isolated events. His work contributes to critical sociolegal and criminological scholarship on emergency powers and disaster, demonstrating that colonialism is the primary force driving Puerto Rico’s crises.
