The Human Rights Lab is pleased to announce our Lab and Mass Incarceration Working Group (MIWG) Fellows student team for the 2021-22 academic year.
In partnership with the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, we established a fellowship for undergraduates to play a leadership role in the Mass Incarceration Working Group. We’re excited to announce our team of Mass Incarceration Working Group Justice Fellows: Dayo Adeoye, Yazud Brito-Milian, Christina Howard, and Chase Leito.
MIWG Justice Fellows will work on community-based projects and develop MIWG activities that will raise the visibility of social injustices caused by mass incarceration to the UChicago community.
We are also delighted that Madi Wright, Durrell Washington and Tommy Hagan will continue their work with the Lab this year.
As Special Projects Fellow, Madi is working on our prison education partnership with Prison+Neighborhood Arts/Education Project and leading special projects with the MIWG.
As Graduate Fellow, Durrell is providing leadership and coordination support to the MIWG team. Durell is also serving as Mentor to Lab BA Thesis Fellows.
As Research Fellow, Tommy is continue to work with the Lab after graduating in June 2021 to provide research support and to assist with archiving and documenting Lab initiatives.
MIWG Justice Fellow | Christina Howard (she/her) is a fourth-year double majoring in Public Policy and Sociology and minoring in Human Rights. On campus she is involved with the Bridge Writing Workshop, leading volunteers in facilitating creative writing workshops at Cook County Jail. She has been involved with Parole Illinois as a Human Rights Lab Justice Intern and has also spent two summers supporting people going through the parole process in California as an intern at UnCommon Law.
MIWG Justice Fellow | Dayo Adeoye (she/her) is a fourth-year Law, Letters, and Society & Religious Studies double major and Human Rights minor, from Marysville, Ohio. Dayo currently serves as the co-President for the UChicago Black Professional Society (BPS), Vice President & co-founder of the Georgiana Rose Organization (GRO), and as the Leadership Development Coordinator for Leaders of Color. During her time at UChicago, Dayo has been involved with Women+ in Law, Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity, the OBS Political Action Committee, and the Iowa Project where she worked as an organizer for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. Much of Dayo’s work has revolved around empowering people who are system-impacted and ending mass incarceration in America. This includes working as a policy intern for the Lt. Governor of Illinois Juliana Stratton’s Justice, Equity, and Opportunity Initiative, and volunteering with the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project. Dayo is also a 2021 recipient of the Pozen Center’s Human Rights Lab BA Fellowship .
MIWG Justice Fellow | Chase Leito (they/he) is a 4th year majoring in Sociology with a double minor in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, and Inequality, Social Problems, and Change. They are currently interning at the Thurgood Marshall Institute, the multi-disciplinary center within NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, working with senior researchers on issues related to racial and criminal justice, economic equity, and protecting voting rights. As a Stamps Scholar, Chase conducts research on social movements related to police violence and the criminal legal system which will be compiled into their new podcast called Decarceral Constellations. They are also the co-founder and lead audio engineer for Kinda Sorta Brown, an award-winning podcast that discusses different social and political issues that affect racial groups. Chase is very excited to be working with the Lab this year as a Mass Incarceration Working Group Fellow.
MIWG Justice Fellow | Yazud Brito-Milian (they/them) is a twenty year-old Latine writer, poet, and teacher born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with roots in Mexico. They call Chicago, IL their home where they work at the intersections of arts learning, arts developmental work, and abolitionist policy work. Yazud is pursuing a bachelors of arts in Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry and a minor in Computer Science with a concentration in Human-Computer Interaction. Their creative writing continues to find a home through performance art with the Underground Collective, a safe-space multi-disciplined arts collective.
Special Projects Fellow | Madeline (Madi) (they/she) is a junior at the University of Chicago studying Critical Race and Ethnic Studies and Comparative Human Development. Madi has worked as an intern for the Pozen Center for one year and is excited for their work to continue and grow. Outside of academics, Madi works with various community organizations such as the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project, #DefundCPD Arts & Propaganda Committee, as well as on-campus organizing spaces. They also serve as a college counselor for Black high school students through the Ron Brown Scholars Guided Pathway Support Program and a writing instructor for the HUMA courses at the university. Madi intends to pursue law school following undergraduate school with the hopes of utilizing their degree to continue organizing and teach radical politics both inside and outside prisons. Originally from South Los Angeles, Madi hopes to impact communities both in Chicago and LA.
Graduate Fellow | Durrell Malik Washington, Sr. (he/him) is a PhD candidate in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago. At the Pozen Center, Durrell supports the Lab and the Mass Incarceration Working Group. Durrell’s research interest lies in understanding the intersections between juvenile justice and systems of care. Durrell is also interested in using network and spatial analysis to understand patterns of incarceration in urban neighborhoods. Durrell is currently working on two projects; one is a mixed methods study assessing students’ perceptions of campus police, and the other is evaluating violence prevention programs on the south side of Chicago. Durrell is a native New Yorker and received his master’s in Social Work from Columbia University in 2018.
Alumni Research Fellow | Tommy Hagan (he/him) graduated from the College in June 2021 as a Fundamentals: Issues and Texts and Philosophy double major. As part of his senior thesis in Philosophy, he examined the power relations of the carceral state and the philosophy of abolitionist praxis. On campus, he served as co-director of the Bridge Writing Workshop, which facilitates creative writing programs at Cook County Jail and IYC–St. Charles. He has worked as a Pozen intern and justice intern at the Final 5 Campaign—a coalition of activists, advocates, and system-impacted people working to close the five remaining youth prisons in Illinois. He is the 2021 Dr. Aizik Wolf Post-Baccalaureate Fellow in Human Rights. In this capacity, he works as the co-director of the Rising, Elevating, and Leading (R.E.A.L) Youth Initiative, a youth-led, peer-mentor resource hub, which addresses the trauma and PTSD of incarceration and post-incarceration community re-entry. With the Lab, Tommy has formerly served as a research assistant and community-building intern.