Claudia Mitchell

Claudia Mitchell is a James McGill Professor in the Faculty of Education at McGill University, where she is the director of the McGill Institute for Human Development and Well-Being and the founder and director of the Participatory Cultures Lab. She also holds a position as honorary professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and has received numerous prizes including the 2016 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Gold Medal awarded for the impact of her research, an award by the Canadian Bureau for International Education for her innovative work with young people and sexuality education in Southern Africa, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Mid-Sweden.

Her research cuts across a number of areas, including girlhood studies, youth, sexuality and HIV and AIDS, gender violence, and teacher identity. She works in many countries including Canada, South Africa, Russia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Swaziland, The Gambia, Kenya, and Vietnam. As a methodologist, she is particularly interested in participatory visual research. She has 25 books published or in press, most of which pertain to visual and other arts-based methodologies or to girlhood studies. She is a co-founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning peer-reviewed journal Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal.