Mario Orospe Hernandez

Mario Orospe Hernández is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Philological Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). A Fulbright-García Robles scholar from Mexico City, he earned his PhD in Religious Studies at Arizona State University in 2025, following degrees in Political Science and Philosophy at UNAM.

His research investigates how the boundaries between “religious” and “secular” have been historically constructed and contested, and how these distinctions shape understandings of matter, value, and human relationships with technology and the natural world. Combining anthropological research, philosophical inquiry, and historical genealogy, his work brings critical secular studies and Latin American thought into conversation with environmental humanities. 

His doctoral dissertation, Mattering Technologies, draws on fieldwork in Bolivia to explore how Andean relational practices with other-than-human beings persist within lithium extraction. These practices problematize the boundaries between religion and technology, as well as the reduction of minerals to raw materials. At ASU, he contributed to the collaborative research project Beyond Secularization: Religion, Science, and Technology in Public Life. 

His current postdoctoral project, From Living Matter to Raw Material, investigates the history of the notion of ‘raw material,’ tracing its transformation from a theological and metaphysical category (materia prima) into an economic concept, with particular attention to mining in the colonial Andes.

He is the author of Biopolítica y Liberación: la noción de vida humana en Agamben y Dussel (Prometeo, 2023). His work has appeared in Political Theology, Philosophy and Global Affairs, the SSRC’s Intersections, and The Conversation. 

From 2025 to 2026, he served as Head of International Relations in the Office of the President of the Mexican Senate.