jessica Taft is Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz and the Faculty Director of the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas. Rooted in critical interdisciplinary approaches to child and youth studies, Dr. Taft’s research focuses on young people’s contributions to social change through activism and social
movements in North and South America. Building on nearly twenty years of research with young activists, she is increasingly focused on these young people’s encounters with adult-run political institutions and the various programs that seek to include them in policy-making. In this vein, she is currently working on a book project that looks at the history of how children’s
political participation has been imagined, produced, and institutionalized within the child rights sphere.

She is the author of Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas (NYU Press, 2011), The Kids Are in Charge: Activism and Power in Peru’s Movement of Working Children (NYU Press, 2019), and numerous journal articles on children’s participation, youth politics, and critical civic engagement. Dr. Taft is part of a variety of local, national, and
international collaborative projects focused on child and youth participation and has worked with funders and non governmental organizations to deepen their analysis of the challenges and possibilities of meaningful engagement with young people.