
Contact Information
3080 Lincoln Hall
Urbana, IL 61801
M/C 454
Research Interests
My research is focused on the sociolegal and criminological study of Puerto Rico and its legal and political relationship with the US. I am particularly interested in studying how the Puerto Rican case provides a better understanding of the connections between colonialism, law, emergency powers, crises, and corruption, and its social, criminological, economic and political consequences. I am also interested in the study of processes of criminalization of social, political and environmental movements, and contemporary manifestations of corporate crimes and state crimes. Currently, I am working on my book, Law in/as Crisis: Emergency Powers, Corruption, and Resistance in Puerto Rico. In my book, I analyze the role of law, emergency powers, and anticorruption social movements in the current Puerto Rican multilayered political, financial, economic, and humanitarian crisis. My book asks how Puerto Ricans access a just recovery amid simultaneous crises and the continuous use and renewal of state of emergency declarations in response to these crises. In this project, I employ qualitative methodologies, such as ethnography, case studies, historical research, critical discourse analysis and policy analysis. My other research interest are:
Criminology, Law, and Society
State of Emergency and Crises
Politica and Legal Theory
Crimes of the Powerful (Corruption, State and Corporate Crime)
Colonialism and Anticolonial Movements
Puerto Rico
Latin America and the Caribbean Sociology
Education
Ph.D. University of the Basque Country (2015)
Ph.D. University of Coimbra (2014)
M.A. International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Oñati. University of the Basque Country (2009)
B.A. University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (2007)
Courses Taught
Soc 275 Criminology
Soc 310 Sociology of deviance
Soc 378 Sociology of Law
Soc 479 Law and Society
Additional Campus Affiliations
Assistant Professor, Sociology
Assistant Professor, Political Science
Assistant Professor, Latina/Latino Studies
Assistant Professor, Women & Gender in Global Perspectives
Recent Publications
Atiles, J. (2022). Introduction: Decoding Crypto-Paradises: Fraud Crypto-Colonialism, Climate Crisis, and Dispossession in the Global South. South Atlantic Quarterly, 121(3), 594-599. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-9826004
Atiles, J. (2022). The Paradise Performs: Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, and the Puerto Rican Tax Haven. South Atlantic Quarterly, 121(3), 612-627. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-9826032
Atiles Osoria, J. (2021). The COVID-19 Pandemic in Puerto Rico: Exceptionality, Corruption and State-Corporate Crimes. State Crime Journal, 10(1), 104-125. https://doi.org/10.13169/STATECRIME.10.1.0104
Atiles Osoria, J. (2021). Waves of Disaster: The Normalization of exceptionality and (In)Security in Puerto Rico. Latin American Law Review. https://doi.org/10.29263/lar07.2021.01
Atiles-Osoria, J. (2021). Whyte, David (2020). Ecocide: Kill the Corporation Before it Kills Us. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 220. $14.95. ISBN 978–1–5261-4698-4. Crime, Law and Social Change, 76(1), 105-107. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-021-09947-0