Meghan Rahill

Meghan Rahill is the Senior Project Manager and Research Associate for Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC) at the Middlebury Institute. She manages a talented team of graduate research assistants in a confidential online extremism project. Meghan is also the Managing Director at The ‘MPOWER Project, which uses key audience insights to develop regional PVE solutions framed around the key grievances of the particular vulnerable audience. As a Research Fellow working at Rise to Peace, a non-profit research and analysis organization, she has gained significant experience in PVE research and policy analysis. Over the past two years, she has conducted and reviewed fascinating confidential interviews with former extremists, child extremist soldiers, academics, and NGO experts in PVE. She has worked alongside founder Ahmad Mohibi to write a pending publication on the Psychosocial Drivers of Violent Extremism.

Meghan has significant professional experience developing extremist databases, monitoring potential extremist threats online, and analyzing social media accounts. She holds a Master’s Degree in Criminal Justice specializing in Terrorism Studies from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and a Bachelor’s Degree in International Studies and Political Science from Saint Bonaventure University. Most particularly, she is interested in the current threat of right-wing and anti-government extremism, and how it overlaps with misinformation, disinformation, and the use of technology. In an effort to understand this further, she has worked to establish herself in a larger network of PVE-related endeavors to research and implement effective preventative policies. Ultimately, she hopes to use her experience to understand how PVE policies should adapt to new anti-government extremism in the United States for more predictive and preventative solutions which combat misinformation and distrust amongst wider audiences.