Megan Willows, MA
Research Fellow
New York State Youth Justice Institute
[email protected]

Megan Mae Willows (she/her/hers) is a PhD Candidate in the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany, SUNY. She received her MA in Criminal Justice at UAlbany in 2017 and holds a BA in International Relations from the University of Edinburgh. Before coming to the YJI, she taught upper-level undergraduate courses for criminal justice majors including Gender & Crime and Cross-National Crime. Megan's research interests center on the role of gender in crime, victimization, and criminal justice encounters with an emphasis on intersectional risks for violence. She utilizes both quantitative and qualitative research methods and her recent works have explored the relationship between gender nonconformity and victimization and in understanding local service providers' efforts to address gender-based violence against new immigrants.

Within this collaborative project, we intend to center BIPOC girls, femmes, and TGNCNB youth’s visions of what has and can nourish their personal and collective sense of belonging, dignity, safety and well-being. Where have they, do they, or would they like to experience connection. We intend to also center BIPOC girls’ perspectives on the ways in which systems may contribute to a “tapestry of harm” (Dr. Monique Morris) towards them and towards their families and caregivers. What harms are perpetrated by systems towards BIPOC girls and/or their caregivers? What harms are experienced within families and communities by society, and how do systems push out and isolate young people who have experienced these harms rather than heal and engage them? We remain curious in our exploration of what systems can be shaped or molded to promote healing and to strengthen families and communities as sites of healing and belonging, and what systems need to be dismantled because they are intrinsically and irreparably violent and harmful. We intend to solicit BIPOC girls' perspectives on how and where they feel affirmed, stigmatized, excluded, shamed, infantilized and/or adultified, but also celebrated, supported, empowered and/or engaged, at the intersection of their social identities within larger systems of racism, sexism, misogynoir, homophobia, cissexism, transphobia and adultism.

Sarah approaches this work from a place of cultural humility and solidarity as a queer white woman with significant racial, economic, and cis privilege, and privilege as an institutionally based researcher. She also brings significant experience as an activist, social worker and social work researcher with systems impacted marginalized youth, particularly those with queer and trans identities. She aspires to be mindful and accountable to the relational context between us and the ways it shaped by our identities, experiences, history, institutional contexts, etc., and how it may show up and inform our work.  She wants to take responsibility for and manage labor related to my own underexplored areas that may emerge, and also hopes LeConte will feel safe in knowing she will respond with humility and care if she should ever feel she needs to point them out to her. Sarah would like to be thoughtful in navigating how her own and our own identities may be perceived and received by the young people we engage with and with each other. She’d like for the space(s) we cultivate with each other to do this work to be as safe (as opposed to comfortable) and authentic as possible, and a place where we can process and synthesize the ways we emotionally, spiritually, intellectually and otherwise impact and are impacted by the work, as well as the ways we take care of ourselves and each other. She believes that personal transformation is intrinsic to societal transformation, and would love it if this work could be healing for us in addition to being healing for communities. 

LeConte approaches this work as a Black Feminist, a community-accountable scholar (Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs), and a double dutch methodologist (Dr. Keisha Green). These identities, positionalities, frames, and intentions are meant to center that communities that she comes from, loves, and are answerable to.  LeConte also brings significant experience as a youth worker, public health practitioner, and transdisciplinary researcher working with Black and Latinx youth exiting juvenile detention centers, recruited into violence prevention programs, residing in public housing, and/or participating in afterschool youth development programs. For LeConte, the communities that she amplifies and the young people that she centers are inside, outside, betwixt, and between the non-profit- and academic-industrial complexes. She looks forward to collaborating with Sarah, a like-minded/hearted scholar-activist, in this work. She hopes that we assume best intent from one another and trust in each other as we work to seek clarity and strengthen our communication. She hopes that we will regularly ask ourselves who are we conducting this research for, how are we conducting this research, and why are we conducting this research. 

Our hope is that our participatory action research can be enriching for participants/co-researchers in addition to creating data and knowledge that can inform stakeholders in the pursuit of equity and justice. We hope that our research insights may create a sustainable mechanism for BIPOC girls to be at the table when decisions that impact them are made in New York State, and/or that they feel affirmed in shaking or leaving the ‘table’ (Nina Simone) when it is no longer a safe/brave/just space for them.