Critical Youth Work Collective

A Community-Engaged Research Lab 

What is CYC?

CYC is a research lab comprised of faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and community-based practitioners committed to humanizing research, critical youth work pedagogies, and honoring youth work professionals. CYC interrogates the sociopolitical context of community-based youth work and uses research and community-engaged learning with youth development professionals to advocate for critical youth work practices that acknowledge the humanity and dignity of Black and other multiply oppressed youth.

 

Core Values?

  • Humanizing Pedagogies

  • Critical Youth Work Practice

  • Collaboration

  • Community-Engaged Research

 

Learning in Community

Communities of Practice Series

CYC offers communities of practice and learning communities for youth workers and community-based leaders committed to disrupting systemic whiteness, heteronormativity, and patriarchy in youth work practice and within community-based educational spaces.   

Interactive Keynotes/Workshops

CYC offers interactive keynotes and workshops offered to community-based youth program leaders, youth workers, and funders who support youth work and community-based education.

 

Advocacy

*Partnerships with organizations, boards of youth work organizations, movement building alongside young people*

 

Partners:

Dr. Deepa Sriya Vasudevan

Dr. Vasudevan’s research examines the social, cultural, and organizational dynamics of community-based youth programs as framed by issues of social inequality. Her research explores how experienced youth workers – the adult practitioners who mentor, educate, and support youth – understand their occupational identities and persistence in a field often associated with emotional burnout, low salaries, and frequent career exits. Dr. Vasudevan’s research also explores the out-of-school experiences of undocumented youth through the National UnDACAmented Research Project.

 

Research Team:

 

Moisés G. Contreras

is a PhD student at Harvard University. He is interested in the promise and potential of liberatory and humanizing education occurring within community-based educational spaces. He particularly aims to examine the relationships between marginalized youth and youth workers and the window they provide to reimagining education and educational spaces. 

 
 

Woohee Kim

Woohee is a PhD student in Education at Harvard University studying youth activists’ pedagogical and civic practices. Through her scholar activism, she hopes to create spaces for alternative knowledge and pedagogies of resistance.

 

Georgina Rivers

Georgina is a PhD student at Harvard University, after spending 14 years as a youth worker, public-school teacher, and initiative specialist in her beloved “DMV.” She seeks to understand how community-based pedagogical practices cultivate low-income students’ sociopolitical awareness and action, and advance participatory research and policymaking approaches.

 
 

Zora Haque

is a Ph.D. student in Education at Harvard University, concentrating on studies of culture, institutions, and society. Her research focuses broadly on the intersection of race, culture, and education. Specifically, Zora aims to examine how South Asian family socialization shapes students' informal and formal learning experiences, extending to their identity development.

 
 

Michelle Amponsah

is a second-year student at Harvard College.

 

Nora Ngo Mitchell

is a first-year student at Harvard College.