About me
Dr. Deepa S. Vasudevan is a researcher at the American Institutes for Research in the youth, family, and community development program area. Through sociocultural inquiry, Deepa explores the working lives of community-based youth workers, youth experiences in out-of-school time programming, and the dynamics of community school and community-based collaborations toward educational change. Her dissertation study examined how experienced community-based youth workers construct both occupational identities and persist as professionals in the face of immense obstacles –– social undervaluation, financial precarity, workplace managerialism, and racism. She co-edited the 2020 volume At Our Best: Building Youth-Adult Partnerships in Out-of-School Time Settings and is a co-principal investigator of a national study on pressing issues in in(equity) in youth programs. Prior to joining AIR, Deepa taught for four years in the education department at Wellesley College and an additional four years at the Out-of-School Time Resource Center in Philadelphia, coordinating and evaluating professional development opportunities for youth work professionals across the city. Deepa completed her Ed.D. and Ed.M. at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She received her BA from Haverford College with an English major and cultural anthropology minor.
