Faculty Associate
kabitac[at]yorku.ca
Associate Professor
Children, Childhood and Youth program, Department of Humanities, York University
Research Keywords:
Children and youth; culture and cultural studies; South Asia; Southeast Asia; children's studies
Research Region(s):
India, Malaysia, South Asia, Southeast Asia
Research Diaspora(s):
South Asian Diaspora, Southeast Asian Diaspora
I am a critical youth studies scholar with a research and teaching focus in slum communities in India, and with migrant youth in Malaysia. As a scholar I am committed to the development of Majority world scholarship through meaningful research partnerships in Asia-Pacific. My key areas of teaching and research are: changing youth culture in South and Southeast Asia; young people’s relationship with South Asian popular culture; young people’s experiences of migration across Asia; participatory research with children (using child-centred methods that actively involve children in research
and prioritize their own words, opinions, images and experiences), and problematizing international children’s rights discourse with the intention of actively de-colonizing the growing field of Children and Youth Studies. My sole-authored book on changing youth cultures in India (Routledge 2016) is one of the few longitudinal studies of youth in slum communities navigating social and cultural changes in a globalizing India.