Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher

Post-Doctoral Fellow

Contact Information

Graduate School of Education
3700 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Office: 215.898.5004
Email: agk@gse.upenn.edu

Education

B.S., Psychology, International Management Studies; University of Maryland at Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany, 1999
MS.Ed., Psychology of Bilingual Studies; Fordham University, 2003
P.D., School Psychology; Fordham University, 2003
Ed.D., International Educational Development; Teachers College, Columbia University, 2008

Description of Research Expertise

Areas of Expertise
Immigrants and schooling
Citizenship and trans/nationalism
Literacy and development

Professional Biography

Dr. Ghaffar-Kucher began her graduate studies in the field of School Psychology, earning a Professional Diploma in School Psychology and a Masters in the Psychology of Bilingual Students from Fordham University’s Graduate School of Education (New York). As a school psychologist intern, she worked with struggling Indian immigrant students at a public high school in Rockland County, New York. She further developed her interest in immigrant youth during her studies at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she pursued a doctorate in International Educational Development. At Teachers College, she served as the ethnographer for the Muslim Youth in New York City project led by Louis Cristillo and was also part of the research team for the Africa Muslim Immigrants Literacy Initiative (AMILI). Dr. Ghaffar-Kucher has developed and taught courses at Drexel University and Teachers College. Most recently, she was a lecturer in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. She will be a Postdoctoral Fellow at Penn GSE from Fall 2009 to 2011.

Research Interests and Current Projects

Dr. Ghaffar-Kucher’s research has focused primarily on the educational and socialization experiences of immigrant youth. She has worked specifically with working and lower-middle class Pakistani-immigrant youth in New York City, exploring how gender-based expectations, class differences, and age on arrival influence Pakistani immigrant youth’s integration into American society. She plans to extend this work to cross-national comparisons of immigrants and research in the areas of trans/nationalism and migration. Outside of academia, she is a consultant for The Magic Tent, a children’s television program catering to South Asian children. She has presented papers at the Comparative and International Educational Society, the American Anthropological Society, and the Pakistan Workshop (UK).

Courses

EDUC 545 Race and Ethnic Inequalities in Education
EDUC 611 Educational development and Globalization
EDUC 545 Educational development in South Asia
EDUC 668 Master's Writing Seminar

Selected Publications

Ghaffar-Kucher, A. (In press). Citizenship and Belonging in an Age of Insecurity: Pakistani Immigrant Youth in New York City. In Frances Vavrus & Lesley Bartlett (Eds.) New Approaches to Comparative Education: Vertical Case Studies from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. New York: Palgrave.

Ghaffar-Kucher, A. (2009). Book Review: Linguistic Minorities and Modernity: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography by Monica Heller. Journal of Language Policy, 8(1)

Ghaffar-Kucher, A. (2006, December). Editorial Introduction: (Re)Framing the Education of Immigrants. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 9(1). Available at: http://www.tc.edu/cice/Current/9.1/91_edintro.html

Ghaffar-Kucher, A. (2005, May). The Effects of Repatriation on Education in Afghan Refugee Camps in Pakistan. In Dana Burde (Ed.) Education in Emergencies and Post-Conflict Situations: Problems, Responses and Possibilities, Vol.2. Available at: http://www.ineesite.org/core_references/TCJournal_Vol205.pdf