Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández is Director of the Youth Research Lab at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. He is Principal of the Youth Solidarities Across Boundaries Project, a participatory research project with Latinx and Indigenous youth in collaboration with the TDSB’s Urban Indigenous Education Centre. He has over two decades of experience facilitating popular education and participatory research projects in and out of schools and is a founding member of the Another Roadmap network, an international coalition of community-based educators and facilitators. At the YRL, Gaztambide-Fernández oversees several participatory research projects, including the editorial board of in:cite, a youth-run online research journal.

He draws on cultural studies, decolonial/postcolonial and feminist theory, and critical sociology to inform his understanding of curriculum and pedagogy as encounters with difference. His theoretical work focuses on the relationship between creativity, decolonization, and solidarity.