The Yute Lab

The Yute Lab is dedicated to the rigorous, community-engaged study of young people’s lives, culture, and social worlds in urban contexts. With a focus on qualitative and ethnographic methods, the lab examines how youth navigate identity, belonging, consumption, and refusal within the structures and spaces that shape their lifeworlds. 

The Yute Lab is committed to scholarship that takes youth seriously as cultural actors and meaning-makers. The lab also serves as a training ground for emerging researchers, coupling rigorous inquiry with intentional mentorship to develop the next generation of ethnographers and qualitative scholars committed to youth, urban, and transnational ethnographic social research. Its inaugural project focuses on the 'Prom Send-Off' as a site of meaning-making and refusal.