Her research focuses on the political lives of children and youth in North and South America. She is interested in the role of young people in social change and the complex relationship between political cultures, identity narratives, and social movement practices. Her first book, Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas (NYU Press, 2011), is an ethnography of teenage girl activists in five cities in North and South America. She has also published on a range of topics related to youth politics, including articles on “girl power” discourses, girls’ organizations and ideas about the public sphere, peer-driven political socialization amongst activist youth, and youth activists’ concepts of democracy. She is currently working on a book manuscript that focuses on intergenerational collaboration in the Peruvian movement of working children.