Nelson Maldonado Torres

Nelson Maldonado-Torres (born 1971 in San Juan, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican philosopher and professor in Philosophy at University of Connecticut-Storrs. He received his PhD from Brown University in Religious Studies. His work has been influential in contributing to ideas about decoloniality decolonizing epistemology, and in critiquing Western liberalism and Eurocentrism. He is influenced by the works of Frantz Fanon, Emmanuel Levinas, and Enrique Dussel.

He critiques the notion of representational politics as being enough to contribute to systemic change. He is also noted for contributing to discourse on the decolonial turn.

Career He was the head of the Caribbean Philosophical Association from 2008 to 2013. He was one of the signatories to support the creation for a Latina/o Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States. La descolonización y el giro de(s)colonial (2012)

Select articles

"On the coloniality of being: Contributions to the development of a concept" (2007) "Thinking through the decolonial turn: Post-continental interventions in theory, philosophy, and critique—An introduction" (2011) "Outline of ten theses on coloniality and decoloniality" (2016)