While at Harvard, Orlando Rivero-Valdes was a Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of History of the University of Pittsburgh in residence at Harvard. His dissertation project reconstructed the legal, social and intellectual history of religious freedom focusing on the conflicts over the legitimacy of Afro-Cuban religious practices in Cuba between 1878 and 1958. He analyzed how scholars, lawyers, courts, and citizens constructed and transformed different notions about religion and individual rights as part of a long process of modernization initiated during the late colonial times. Other areas of interest include Latin American History, issues of race, ethnicity, and religion, and legal history in slave and post-emancipation societies. He holds the degree of Licenciado of Law from the University of Havana (1993), an LL.M. from the University of Southern California (2008), and an M.A. from the University of Pittsburgh (2011).