Erin McFee of the Corioli Institute: Pozen Center Made Me Feel Like I Could 'Really Do Something'

Article written by Human Rights major Gertie Zwick-Schachter.

Last summer, through the Pozen Center’s Human Rights Internship program, I worked at the Corioli Institute, a non-profit dedicated to changing the way people think about and design policies for rebuilding communities after violence. 

I worked primarily on an upcoming book based on research on the lives of Afghan National Army Special Operations Command (ANASOC) soldiers who were abandoned in the US military’s evacuation of Afghanistan. This project operated under the wing of Trust After Betrayal, a part of the Corioli Institute that explores the impact of organized violence on community trust, and sustainable pathways for societal integration for formerly armed actors. 

My work involved reading Corioli interviews with ANASOC soldiers who resettled in the US, analyzing relevant policy papers, and developing an outline for a book on the subject. I also collaborated with other Corioli team members who were working to help these ANASOC soldiers more directly — centrally by advocating for expedited asylum pathways to help their integration.

This was rewarding work. I’m very interested in the philosopher Hannah Arendt’s view of storytelling as a human rights tool, and I learned a lot from putting this concept into practice in the real world. In their interviews, many of the ANASOC soldiers voiced a desire to share their life histories and experiences; it was an honor to help amplify their voices.

Today, Erin McFee — the Corioli Institute’s founder and president, and a UChicago PhD with numerous ties to the Pozen Center – will be meeting with interested students for a Human Rights Alumni Career Lunch. (Register.) In advance of her appearance, we spoke about her career path and approach to human rights work.

I want people who desire to leave a life of violence behind them and are willing to put in the work towards whatever the culturally appropriate form of atonement of reconciliation is to succeed. And II want their success to be a function more of their heart and their effort than of privilege and luck.

FINDING A HOME AT THE POZEN CENTER

McFee didn’t always work in human rights. After college, she worked in business and finance, before quickly realizing the field wouldn’t satisfy her. While earning an MBA at Simmons College, she found herself drawn less to courses about business than those focused on armed conflict, a longtime interest.  Supportive faculty members who heard about her desire to understand war’s effects on communities pointed her toward anthropology — a field she had previously thought was primarily focused on dinosaur bone s. But it wasn’t immediately obvious to her that this would lead her into academia: the idea of applying to PhD programs came initially from the drummer in the band she played in.

McFee arrived at UChicago’s Department of Comparative Human Development knowing she wanted to study armed conflict in Colombia, where she had already been traveling to meet people working to confront the lingering effects of that country’s long-running internal conflicts. 

It wasn’t long before McFee started gravitating to the Pozen Center. At the time, she recalls, not many people at UChicago were studying armed conflict. Even fewer were focused on Colombia. She soon realized that most of the campus events catching her interest were at Pozen,, and that most of the people she connected with on campus were connected to the center somehow. She ended up interning at the center, winning multiple Pozen graduate lectureships, and receiving funding to support field research for her dissertation. 

“I was very well supported by the Center,” McFee says. She found it “a really great source of community,” somewhere she could develop a “life of the mind” while simultaneously asking questions about how to make change in the world. She credits the center with building her sense not just that she could “really do something” – really build her own positive contribution to the world — but also “that I would be remiss if I didn’t.”

After earning her PhD, McFee was awarded a prestigious Future Leaders Fund grant from United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI). This made it possible for her to spend the next seven years doing work on the ground in a dozen different countries, including Columbia, where she joined multiple government and social service projects, gaining experience “with every sector that had anything to do with human rights and transitional justice after experiences with war.”

building her own dream job

McFee knew that her perfect job would involve a balance of research and action. Rather than wait for this perfect job to come along, she decided to start the Corioli Institute. From the start, she envisioned Corioli as a “think-and-do-tank” that would not just investigate the realities of post-conflict life, but also develop and help implement interventions that help communities heal. 

To date, Corioli projects have included analyzing the links between climate change, migration, and conflict in Libya, Sudan, and Kenya; conducting ethnographic research with former youth gang members in El Salvador; reintegrating veterans in Ukraine; supporting peacebuilding through community gardening in Colombia; and facilitating a restorative justice project for veterans in Chicago. (See a full list of the organization’s initiatives.)

While planning these projects, McFee makes a special effort to involve people who have committed harm against their own communities and are looking to move in a different direction. “I want people who desire to leave a life of violence behind them and are willing to put in the work towards whatever the culturally appropriate form of atonement of reconciliation is to succeed. And II want their success to be a function more of their heart and their effort than of privilege and luck.”

At Thursday’s Lunch and Learn, McFee will reflect on her experiences organizing communities, interacting with high-level human rights bodies, negotiating the gap between the ideals of law and the reality of politics, and learning how to do fieldwork in a way that is as informed as possible about the effects of violence. Register to attend.