Rebecca Wolfe

Dr. Rebecca J. Wolfe is a leading expert on political violence, conflict and development. She is a Senior Lecturer at the Harris School for Public Policy at the University of Chicago, where she also is the Executive Director of the International Policy and Development area and the Academic Lead for the Master of Public Policy program. Prior to joining the faculty at Chicago, she led research and program development related to conflict and fragility at Mercy Corps, an international development and humanitarian agency. 

Dr. Wolfe is able to draw on her extensive practitioner and academic backgrounds to effectively research important development issues, design interventions that are theoretically grounded and evidence based, and communicate both to multiple audiences. Over her career, she has developed conflict prevention and violence reduction programs globally, including Kenya’s largest youth development program, gang violence prevention in Guatemala City, countering violent extremism programs in Nigeria and Yemen, and community-based conflict management interventions in Iraq, Syria, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Tajikistan. Her research on peacebuilding and development interventions has been published in top academic journals, including PNAS and Science. She was a Fellow at Yale University’s Political Violence Field Lab and currently is an affiliate at NYU’s Steinhardt School and the International Security and Development Center in Berlin.

Dr. Wolfe has taught at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs and at the Wagner School for Public Service at New York University. She received her PhD in Social Psychology from Harvard University.