Dr. David G. Ortiz is an Associate Professor of Sociology and was named the inaugural faculty fellow for the Center of Latin American and Border Studies in June 2020 by Provost Carol Parker. He grew up in Mexico City where he completed his B.A. in International Relations at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He received an M.A. in Peace and Conflict Resolution and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Notre Dame. His interests include social movements, political sociology, Latin American Studies,sociology of disasters, digital media communication and research methods. Dr. Ortiz is the founding editor-in-chief of the leading scholarly blog on social movement research, "Mobilizing Ideas".
Most of his work is cross-national, comparative, and with a regional focus on Latin America and Mexico. He has examined the relationship between IMF-sponsored economic programs and protests in Latin America; analyzed the exchanges between violent and nonviolent protest and repression under different regime settings; conducted comparative-historical analyses on State Repression and Mobilization in Latin America; studied the effects of blogging on activism and civic engagement in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; and the long-term effects of natural disasters on the formation and development of networks of activists over several cycles of contention in Mexico after the 1985 earthquake.
Prior to Ortiz's arrival to NMSU in 2015, he served on the Stone Center for Latin American Studies and the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research at Tulane University. Ortiz was appointed to the International and Border Program Recruitment Advisory Board as a part of the NMSU LEADS 2025 Healthy Borders Strategic Initiative Task Force in 2017. He has won several awards for his research and teaching, and has served as an international observer in elections throughout Latin America, including the 1994 Mexican elections with Alianza Civica, and the 2004 Venezuelan Referendum with President Jimmy Carter and the OAS.
