Ramiro Alvarez Ugarte
Ramiro’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of constitutional law and social movements in Latin America. His dissertation is a study on the dynamics of rights-claiming in Argentina. His initial hypothesis is that the processes through which citizens organize, demand rights and engage public officials through their own constitutional narratives must have peculiar features in Latin America, partially determined by the delegative nature of most democracies in the region. Ramiro’s work draws on his constitutional law background and builds on theories concerned with the role of ordinary citizens in constitutional interpretation. Ramiro’s supervisor is Professor Jamal Greene.
Before coming to Columbia, Ramiro taught Constitutional Law and Social Change (2011-2013) and Constitutional Law (2013-2014) at the Universidad de Palermo, in Buenos Aires. Previously, he held an assistant position at the Law School of the Universidad de Buenos Aires (2006-2008). He worked as a human rights attorney at the Association for Civil Rights (2011-2014) and at the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (2009-2011). He has been published in peer-reviewed legal journals in Argentina on issues of constitutional law, legal mobilization and freedom of speech.