Oakes Faculty Fellows
The Oakes College faculty represents a wealth of expertise from the natural sciences to the humanities, and we are proud to have some of the top scholars in the world among our faculty. Our students major in nearly every discipline at UCSC—from economics and computer science, to theater arts and Latin American and Latino studies—and they are well supported by the depth and breadth of the Oakes College faculty and the extensive knowledge of our advising team.
TBA is Oakes's faculty chair!
The Chair of the Faculty is an Academic Senate member, other than the Provost, who is elected by the college Faculty to serve a two year term, and will serve as a member of the Executive Committee.
- Title
- Professor
- Division Social Sciences Division
- Department
- Latin American & Latino Studies
- Affiliations Sociology Department, Research Center for the Americas, Community Studies Program, Education Department
- Phone 831-502-7695
- Fax 831-459-3125
- Website
- Office Location
- Merrill College Academic Building, 106
- Office Hours By appointment; please email
- Mail Stop Merrill/Crown Faculty Services
- Mailing Address
- 1156 High St.
- Santa Cruz CA 95064
- Faculty Areas of Expertise Activism, Youth Studies, Latin American and Latino Studies, Sociology, Democracy
Research Interests
youth activism; childhood and youth studies; social movements; participatory democracy; girls studies; feminist theory; qualitative and participatory research methods.
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.
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)
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.
