Nayeli Riano

Nayeli Riano is Assistant Professor of Humanities in the Center for Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a political theorist specializing in the history of political thought. Her research examines how political concepts and their embedded discourses move across historical, cultural, and linguistic traditions, tracing how temporal frameworks—such as progress, decline, and historical rupture—inform arguments within liberal, republican, and revolutionary thought. She covers the early modern period, the eighteenth century, and the nineteenth century, focusing primarily on the connections between Latin America and Europe. Riano earned her Ph.D. in Political Theory from Georgetown University (2026), her M.Litt. in Intellectual History from the University of St. Andrews (2018), and her B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania (2017).