Jessica Taft

Activist, Educator/Teacher, Writer/Editor

I am a Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. My research focuses on the political lives of children and youth in North and South America. More specifically, I write about youth activism and the ways that girls, children, and youth participate in social movements. My first book, Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas (NYU Press, 2011), is a transnational ethnography of teenage girl activists in five cities in North and South America. My second book, The Kids Are in Charge: Activism and Power in Peru’s Movement of Working Children (NYU Press, 2019), explores the possibilities and challenges for creating horizontal intergenerational social movements.

children's rights, intergenerational relationships, youth activism