Claudia Mitchell is a James McGill Professor in the Department of Integrated studies in the Faculty of Education, McGill University, Canada and an Honorary Professor in the School of Education, University if KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa where she established the Centre for Visual Methodologies for Social Change. She is currently the Interim Director of the Institute of Human Development and Well-Being in the Faculty of Education of McGill University. Her research interests span work in schools with teachers and young people, particularly in the context of gender and HIV&AIDS, studies in Higher Education in the study of mainstreaming issues of gender and HIV&AIDS in South Africa and Ethiopia, and girlhood studies and in particular work related to gender based violence, and to participatory visual methodologies and community-based research in health education, housing and agriculture).
In 2008 she was given an award by the Canadian Bureau of International Education for her innovative work with young people in development contexts. She is involved in a number of research projects. These include studies funded through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada on the uses of digital technology with teachers, and research on ‘what difference does this make?’ in relation to arts-based methodologies for addressing HIV&AIDS in rural communities in South Africa; the Canadian Institute for Health Research in relation to the uses of participatory methodologies for working with aboriginal youth in addressing HIV&AIDS; and the National Research Foundation (South Africa) focusing on two key areas (gender and sanitation; indigenous knowledge and women teachers in the age of AIDS).
Founder of YAHAnet and the Participatory Cultures Lab at McGill, Claudia is also an editor of the academic journal, Girlhood Studies.
