Pablo Mijangos y González, Ph.D.

About the presenter

Professor Mijangos is a historian of politics, religion, and the law in modern Latin America. He first completed his bachelor's in law in Mexico in 2001 and then decided to pursue a Ph.D. in history at the University of Texas at Austin, which he received in 2009. After his graduation, he joined the faculty of the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE), one of the leading public research centers for social science and the humanities in Mexico. He stayed there for 14 years, becoming a level II member of Mexico's National System of Researchers (SNI) and serving as Chair of the History Department between 2020 and 2022. He has published five books and five edited volumes. His most recent work is "Historia mínima de la Suprema Corte de Justicia de México" (Concise History of the Mexican Supreme Court), published in the prestigious collection Historias mínimas by the Colegio de México. The Mexican judiciary's TV channel, Justicia TV, recently chose this book as the subject of a multi-chapter documentary that will air in the second half of 2024. He also directs a book series, Legal History of Latin America, published by the Spanish press Tirant Lo Blanch, now numbering over 20 titles.

He is currently working on the history of concordats in post-colonial Latin America between the 1820s and 1878. By examining the negotiations and agreements between the papacy and the different republics that emerged after independence, Dr. Mijangos aims to reinterpret the transformations of Catholicism in the region throughout the nineteenth century and the influence of these religious developments on state-building processes. Since the larger policy of the Holy See for the Americas can only be appreciated through a comparative and transnational approach, this project also emphasizes an understanding of Latin America as a true continental region rather than a collection of separate national histories.

At SMU, he is interested in teaching classes on Mexican, Latin American, Spanish, and legal history, as well on the global history of Catholicism.