Claudia Mitchell is a James McGill Distinguished Professor at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education within the Faculty of Education. She is the director of the Institute for Human Development and Well-being and the founder and director of Participatory Cultures Lab. Claudia is also an honorary professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban South Africa.
Her research and publications cross a variety of areas including visual and other arts-based participatory approaches to working with teachers, community health care workers and youth in the global fight against HIV and AIDS; promoting gender equality and combating gender-based violence in and around schools; poverty reduction (particularly in relation to girls and women), new literacies and researching children’s popular culture; and, girlhood studies more broadly. She has worked (or is currently working) in Canada, South Africa, Rwanda, Swaziland, Ethiopia, Russia, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Claudia has been an adviser/consultant for CIDA, UNICEF, UNGEI, the Ministry of Gender and Family Protection in Rwanda, UNESCO, HEAIDS (Higher Education in South Africa) and the Gorbachev Foundation. She was the lead consultant for looking at violence in schools for The UN Secretary-General’s study on Violence against Children. Claudia has published numerous reports about sexual health, and the impact that rurality and violence has on HIV and AIDS on girls and women. In 2008, Claudia was given an award by the Canadian Bureau of Education for her innovative work in development contexts.
