Amina Ally
PhD candidate at NTNU
Ally works as a PhD Candidate specializing in Interdisciplinary Child Studies at the Department of Education and Lifelong Learning (IPL) at NTNU, and is part of the Critical Child and Youth Studies (CCYS) research group. She completed her MA in Communication & Culture at York University in Toronto. Her MA research explored male pop idol fangirls’ hybrid identities and desire through analyzing documentary films, online discourses, and digital fangirl artifacts. Additionally, she has worked on the project Embodying the Tween: Living Girlhood in Global and Digital Spaces at the Institute for Research on Digital Literacies (IRDL), York University. Her PhD research focuses on popular culture and new digital media platforms as sites for identity construction. Drawing on new materialist and postcolonial frameworks she examines how children with hybrid identities construct a sense of self, belonging and citizenship in a digitally mediated and globalizing world.
Tell us about your project!
The PhD project examines how children with hybridized cultural identities negotiate having a multi-cultural/ethnic background in an increasingly globalizing and digitally-mediated world. As digital natives, children have unique insights towards aspects of identity construction such as citizenship and belonging, as both consumers and creators on platforms like TikTok. Using creative arts-based methods alongside digital ethnography, this project aims to understand the role of popular culture in identity construction both online and offline through conducting research with children. Additionally, online, and offline spaces are being considered more than distinct dual spaces. This project aims to examine processes of identification within the third space between online and offline, in collaboration with young people.
“The PhD project examines how children with hybridized cultural identities negotiate having a multi-cultural/ethnic background in an increasingly globalizing and digitally-mediated world”
— Amina Ally on her PhD project “Cultural Identity and Popular Culture: New digital media platforms and mapping multiplicities of childhood”