DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Ely Orrego-Torres is a Lecturer at the Department of Religious Studies and Political Science. During Fall 2025, she is teaching the course “Religion, Law, and Politics: Politics of Religious Diversity.” 

Her research agenda intertwines international relations and political theory to address questions on religion and politics in the global context. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University in 2025. Previously, she earned a B.A. in Political Science from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and an M.A. in Philosophy and Contemporary Thought from Universidad Diego Portales. 

She is currently working on her first book on the politics of religious freedom and secularism in the Americas over the last years (2017–2023) by devoting attention to transnational and regional networks, particularly the religious actors participating in the Organization of American States (OAS). She uses an interdisciplinary approach that relies on ethnographic methods and critical theories to account for narratives of religious freedom and secularisms in the present historical context. She is also interested in ecofeminist political theologies and transnational solidarities in Latin America. Her work on these topics has been published in Social Compass and Philosophy and Global Affairs.

Previously, she was a Visiting PhD student at the Centre de Recherches Internationales (CERI) at Sciences Po-Paris, a Northwestern Buffett Global Impacts Graduate Fellow, a Social Science Research Council Religion, Spirituality, and Democratic Renewal Fellow (SSRC-Fetzer Institute), and a Mellon Cluster Fellow in Critical Theory.

Outside academia, she is a foodie and loves exploring new restaurants, cooking new recipes, and trying street food around the world.

You can learn more about her and her work at elyorregotorres.com