Mariana Velasco-Rivera is a nonresident scholar at the Center for the U.S. and Mexico and an assistant professor of law at Maynooth University in Ireland. She is also co-editor of the International Association of Constitutional Law Blog (IACL Blog). Before joining Maynooth University, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Chair of Comparative Constitutionalism held by Professor Ran Hirschl at the University of Göttingen in Germany from 2019 to 2021. She also served as an Emile Noël Fellow at NYU School of Law during the 2020-2021 academic year.

Velasco-Rivera earned her Doctor of Juridical Science (JSD) and her Master of Laws (LLM) from Yale Law School. She holds a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). During the 2016-2017 academic year, she was a Yale Fox International Fellow and a visiting researcher at the Center for Global Constitutionalism at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Before her graduate studies, she clerked for Judge José Ramón Cossío Díaz at the Supreme Court of Mexico from 2010 to 2014.

Her research interests include public law, specifically constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, and constitutional theory. In her work, she explores the relationship between constitutionalism, constitutional design, and democracy, examining how political norms and practices shape legal institutions.