Keynote Speakers
Scott Lash
Scott Lash is a professor of sociology and cultural studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Lash’s first academic post was at Lancaster University, where he became a professor in 1993. Between 1986 and 1991 he spent two years in Berlin as a Humboldt Fellow. In 1998 he went to Goldsmiths College, London University, to help establish the new Center for Cultural Studies, where he is Professor and Centre Director, as well as Project Leader in the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre. Lash is author of Sociology of Postmodernism (1990); Another Modernity, A Different Rationality (1999); and Critique of Information (2002). With John Urry, he is co-author of The End of Organized Capitalism (1987) and Economies of Signs and Space (1994); and with Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens of Reflexive Modernization (1994). Recent empirical research with Celia Lury, Dede Boden and Dan Shapiro has focused on the biographies of global cultural products and the new media in London. His research interests include information society, global media, continental philosophy, technology and culture, and the problem of "flows".
Sunaina Maira
Sunaina Maira is a Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Desis in the House: Indian American Youth Culture in New York City and co-editor of Youthscapes: The Popular, the National, the Global and Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America, which won the American Book Award in 1997. Her new book, Missing: Youth, Citizenship, and Empire After 9/11 (Duke University Press), is on South Asian Muslim immigrant youth in the U.S. and issues of citizenship and empire after 9/11. Maira was one of the founding organizers of Youth Solidarity Summer, a program for young activists of South Asian descent, and the South Asian Committee on Human Rights (SACH), that focused on post-9/11 civil and immigrant rights issues in the Boston area. She has also worked with various community and immigrant rights groups in the Bay Area.
Vinod Chandra
Vinod Chandra is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at J N Post Graduate College, Lucknow University, Lucknow, India. He is a recipient of Commonwealth Academic Staff Scholarship and has been awarded Ph.D. in Sociology by the University of Warwick (United Kingdom). At the International Sociology Association (ISA), he holds the posts of Vice-president (Asia Region) for the period of 2006-2010 in the Research Committee on Sociology of Youth (RC:34). He is also Executive Board Member of RC:53 (Sociology of Childhood) in ISA. His latest publications include ‘Children’s Domestic Work’ (2008) published by Manak Publication New Delhi and ‘Growing up in a Globalized World’ (2009) published by Macmillan India, New Delhi. Dr Chandra has recently carried out his post doctoral research at Maison Des Sciences de l’Homme (MSH), Paris under the Indo-French Social Scientist Award Scheme. His interest in youth and childhood studies has involved him in the study of Sociology of Children’s Work and placement of children in the division of labour. He is currently involved in a project on “Indian diaspora and identity crisis among young Indian”. This is a joint project with Dr Vasintha Veeran and editing a book on the theme. Widely travelled Dr Chandra’s academic itinerary includes Britain, Germany, Belgium, Canada, Norway, Australia, Malta, Macau, China and France.
Leena Suurpää
Leena Suurpää (D.Soc.Sc) works as a research director in the Finnish Youth Research Network. Her cross-disciplinary research interests are related to themes around young people, multiculturalism and racism. The approches vary from local youth work and NGO activies to political challenges of contemporary welfare states. During the years 2009-2010 Suurpää has worked as a visiting scholar in France (École des hautes études en sciences sociales, EHESS/ Centre for Sociological Analysis and Intervention, CADIS), with the aim to reflect on antiracist activities and politics of civic organisations in Helsinki and Paris.
Read the abstract 'Political Solidarities in Youth Research'.
Karen Valentin
Karen Valentin holds a Ph.D. in anthropology and is an Associate Professor at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University. She has conducted research in Nepal, India, Vietnam and Denmark within the fields of educational anthropology, childhood and youth, schooling, urbanity, migration and planned development. She is the main editor of YOUNG. Nordic Journal of Youth Research (SAGE Publications). Her publications include, among others the monography, Schooled for the Future? Educational Policy and Everyday Life among Urban Squatters in Nepal (Information Age Publishing, 2005) and contributions to Youth and the City in the Global South (Indiana University Press, 2007) edited by Karen Tranberg Hansen. She is currently engaged in a research project on Nepali migration to India and will be expanding it to include transnational migration from Nepal to Denmark as part of a larger comparative project “Education, mobility and citizenship. An anthropological study of educational migration to Denmark”.