Valentina Errazuriz-Besa, a PhD candidate in Education at Teachers College, is conducting dissertation research in Chile by looking into the convergence between the country’s student-led feminist movement and the apparent citizenship education crisis, particularly among young women.
“I examine this apparent contradiction exploring the ways in which young women are currently politically engaged and challenge gender oppression in their high schools and their activist spaces,” she says. “From a post-colonial and post-structural feminist theoretical framework, I have conducted a critical ethnography to understand how female public high school students in Chile produce their gender/political subjectivities during a context of feminist contentious politics and creatively respond, theorize and re-imagine political engagement, providing insight into what is and what can be education for democratic citizenship and gender justice.”
Errazuriz-Besa’s dissertation work will wrap up in May 2020.