Celina Su
Photo: Annette Hornischer

Associate Professor, Brooklyn College, City University of New York

Bosch Fellow in Public Policy - Class of Fall 2012

Celina Su is an associate professor of political science at the City University of New York and co-founding executive director of the Burmese Refugee Project, which employs participatory models to foster community development among Shan Burmese refugees in northwest Thailand. From 2011 to 2012, Su served on the steering committee for New York City’s inaugural participatory budgeting process, whereby residents (rather than elected officials) decided how local capital funds should be spent. Her research, focusing on civil society and the cultural politics of education and health policy, has been awarded many grants, among them the New York University / MasterCard Foundation Grant (2010), four consecutive PSC-CUNY Grant (2006 through 2009), the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation Fellowship for Excellence in Teaching (2007), and the New York University/Ford Foundation Grant (2006). She has written numerous articles and two books on participatory democracy and civic engagement, the politics of health, and education policy: Streetwise for Book Smarts: Grassroots Organizing and Education Reform in the Bronx (Cornell, 2009), and, co-authored with Gaston Alonso, Noel Anderson, and Jeanne Theoharis Our Schools Suck: Young People Talk Back to a Segregated Nation on the Failures of Urban Education (New York University Press, 2009).

Project Description

Performative Politics, Critical Pedagogy, and Community Development in the US and the EU

At the American Academy in Berlin, Su worked towards a comparative analysis of youth empowerment models in the US and the EU. Su’s past research examined how youth in spatially segregated, racially and/or linguistically marginalized communities in the US attempt to inform what their local built and natural environments should look like. Public forums often exclude certain groups, such as the elderly, women, and youth, in different ways, and they often conscribe pre-set roles for politicians, technical experts, and different constituent groups. To present their arguments in the first place, youth must develop creative ways to “perform” and grab attention as activists. Su is particularly interested in how organizations emphasize not only reason-giving and persuasion, but also performance and dramaturgy, in their attempts to help youth participate in deliberative, democratic politics (marked by reciprocity, inclusiveness, openness, and bottom-up accountability). Su aims to build upon this work and glean potential cross-Atlantic lessons by examining youth empowerment models and politics in the EU context.

Back To Top