Sick of AIDS: South African Youth Cultures, Communication and Sexuality
2002-2005
PI: Claudia Mitchell
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
This study examines the interplay, real and potential, of 3 distinct youth-focused communication communities in South Africa which, in one way or another, address youth sexuality:
- those working in the area of Entertainment-Education (E-E) as an approach to marketing health through popular media;
- those involved in studying mainstream popular/youth culture (ranging from Diesel ads to Kwaito music);
- those practitioners and academics involved with youth literature (novels, plays, etc.)The overall objective of this study is to explore how to understand emerging adolescent sexuality in the context of illness and death, or conversely, how to understand illness in the context of health, sexuality and culture.
Women in the Third Millennium: Civic and Political Responsibility of Russian Women
2002-2004
PI: Claudia Mitchell
University of Calgary Gorbachev Fund ‘99
Women in the Third Millennium is a partnership between the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow and the Faculty of Education, McGill University. The project is aimed at fostering and supporting the participation of women in civil society. Our work focuses on public activity, with the aim of learning more about how such initiatives can contribute to a discourse of gender within public policy, and ultimately, to influence public policy around issues of gender more generally. Our “starting point” is to focus on young professional women who are between the ages of 25-35, a group who are particularly marginalized within the political process, being outside the experiences both of the collectivity of their mothers and grandmothers, and the contemporary issues of consumerism of young women in their late teens. In general they are already ‘launched’ in terms of education and careers, both in terms of establishing themselves but also in terms of running up against what have come to be described as ‘glass ceilings’, ‘glass escalators’ and ‘brick walls’. At the same time, they are a particularly vital group in that they are the very next generation of women to assume leadership in Russian society.
Soft Cover: Youth, Creative Vision and HIV Prevention
2001-2003
PI: Claudia Mitchell
Canadian Society for International Health HIV/AIDS Small Grants Fund Phase 11
This project is a partnership of McGill University and the Centre for the Book in Cape Town, South Africa. The project, a youth-based participatory approach to AIDS prevention focuses on how young township authors, male and female (ages 14-18) can be involved in a hands-on literacy projec that produces a youth-to-youth vehicle for addressing issues of sexuality and AIDS. The particular vulnerability of youth to HIV is of key concern to this project. The ‘sick of AIDS’ phenomenon challenges us to invent new ways to get youth excited about prevention.
Key Objectives:
- To address in a concrete way the information overload that young people in South Africa are experiencing in relation to AIDS;
- To provide a forum for youth perspectives and youth participatory processes that place their needs at the centre of emering prevention strategies;
- To bring together new methods, and to foster new links to be used in addressing HIV/AIDS prevention such as hip-hop, computer based technologies and literature;
- To create new youth-AIDS partnerships between Canada and South Africa, as well as to strengthen partnerships in South Africa.See also www.utgaap.info
Investigating Social Change in Action: Reading Adolescence as (More Than) a Literary Space in South African Young Adult Fiction
1999-2002
PI: Claudia Mitchell
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Women in the Third Millennium is a partnership between the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow and the Faculty of Education, McGill University. The project is aimed at fostering and supporting the participation of women in civil society. Our work focuses on public activity, with the aim of learning more about how such initiatives can contribute to a discourse of gender within public policy, and ultimately, to influence public policy around issues of gender more generally. Our “starting point” is to focus on young professional women who are between the ages of 25-35, a group who are particularly marginalized within the political process, being outside the experiences both of the collectivity of their mothers and grandmothers, and the contemporary issues of consumerism of young women in their late teens. In general they are already ‘launched’ in terms of education and careers, both in terms of establishing themselves but also in terms of running up against what have come to be described as ‘glass ceilings’, ‘glass escalators’ and ‘brick walls’. At the same time, they are a particularly vital group in that they are the very next generation of women to assume leadership in Russian society. The absence of their participation in civic society represents both personal loss and a loss of their voices in terms of policy and legislation that will affect future generations. A particular feature of our approach is to recognize the significance of both men’s and women’s experiences in understanding the issues, and in so doing we explore the ways in which men are also part of understanding “women in the third millennium”.
Building an International Digital Futures Network for HIV&AIDS Prevention: Participatory Visual Archives.
2010-2011
PI: Eun Park, with Claudia Mitchell, Naydene De Lange, Sarah Flicker, and John Prosser
SSHRC-IOF
Taking Action: Using Arts Based Approaches to Developing Aboriginal Youth Leadership in HIV Prevention.
2008-2011
PI: Sarah Flicker and R. Jackson, with J. Larkin, J. Doucet, C.Mitchell, T. Prentice, JP Restoule, M. Rivers.
Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Community-Based Research Ethics.
2008-2009
PI: Sarah Flicker, with C. Mitchell, R. Travers
Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Performed Ethnography, HIV/AIDS & Aboriginal Youth.
2008-2009
PI: June Larkin, with Tiffany Nelson, Christine Smillie, Tara Goldstein, and Claudia Mitchell
CANFAR