Campus Directory

Pronouns she, her, her, hers, herself

Division Social Sciences Division

Department/College/Unit Latin American & Latino Studies

Title Professor

Affiliation Faculty

Other UCSC Campus Affiliation Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas
Sociology Department
Community Studies Program
Education Department

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Areas of Expertise Activism
Youth Studies
Latin American and Latino Studies
Sociology
Democracy

Web Site

Primary Office Location Merrill College Academic Building
106

Office Hours for Students/ Office Hours W25: Tuesdays/Thursdays 10:30-11:30 and by appointment

Mail Stop Merrill/Crown Faculty Services

Biography, Education and Training

An interdisciplinary youth studies scholar, my work focuses on the political lives of children and youth across the Americas, with an emphasis on youth activists and youth social movements.  Theoretically, I am interested in how identity narratives shape social movement practices and look at how the subject categories of child, youth, adult, teenager, and girl are constructed within transnational and local political cultures, and how these subject categories matter for the strategies, organizational strucutres, and internal dynamics of social movements. 

My first book, Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas (NYU 2011), is an ethnography of teenage girl activists in five cities in North and South America.  I have recently completed a book on intergenerational relationships and age-based power in the Peruvian movement of working children, entitled The Kids are in Charge: Activism and Power in Peru's Movement of Working Children (NYU 2019).  I have published articles on representations of girl activists, “girl power” discourses, girls’ organizations and ideas about the public sphere, peer-driven political socialization amongst activist youth, and youth activists' conceptions of democracy, as well as an edited volume on youth citizenship and civic-political engagement.  

Research Interests

youth activism; childhood and youth studies; social movements; participatory democracy; girls studies; feminist theory; qualitative and participatory research methods.

Teaching Interests

Latin American and Latinx Youth Movements; Youth and Citizenship; Latin American Childhoods; The Politics of Childhood and Youth; Latin American Social Movements; Qualitative Research Methods.

Selected Publications

• The Kids Are in Charge: Activism and Power in Peru's Movement of Working Children(2019, NYU Press)
• Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas (2011, NYU Press)

• Hopeful, Harmless, and Heroic: Figuring the Girl Activist as Global Savior
• “Adults Talk Too Much”: Intergenerational Dialogue and Power in the Peruvian Movement of Working Children
• Continually Redefining Protagonismo: The Peruvian Movement of Working Children and Political Change, 1976–2015
• Youth Activists, Youth Councils, and Constrained Democracy (with Hava Gordon)
• Rethinking Youth Political Socialization: Teenage Activists Talk Back (with Hava Gordon)