About

Patrick Filipe Conway is Director of the Boston College Prison Education Program. He earned his PhD in Education from Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development. He previously taught Composition and Literature courses in the Boston University Prison Education Program, as well as worked as a criminal defense investigator at public defender offices in Washington, DC and Boston, MA. His research interests relate to the development and expansion of higher education opportunities in prison, including policy and media coverage analysis, effective teaching practices, and the exploration of student experiences in prison. His scholarship has appeared in the Review of Higher Education, Teaching in Higher Education, Sociological Forum, and the Harvard Educational Review, among others. He currently serves as a board member of the New England Commission on the Future of Higher Education in Prison, working in partnership with the New England Board of Higher Education and the Educational Justice Institute at MIT, to help shape the future of college-in-prison in New England. His work and research have been highlighted on the “Have You Heard” podcast, and his nonfiction writing has appeared in literary journals and magazines, receiving notable mention from the Best American Essays anthology. 

Michelle Brooks serves as the Assistant Director for the Prison Education Program. She manages BCPEP’s reentry initiative to assist students as they complete their coursework at the Chestnut Hill campus. She also develops best practices for learning management technologies in the prison, supports degree program administration, and will be teaching a literature course at the Northeastern Correctional Center in the spring of 2024. Michelle joined BCPEP in 2023 after working for four years in alternative ed and juvenile justice. She is delighted to be collaborating with the BC community to expand access to the college’s high quality liberal arts education. Michelle received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She specializes in medieval literature, Geoffrey Chaucer, materialism, and carceral theory. She has published articles in Studies in Philology, the Literary Encyclopedia, and has a forthcoming piece in the Yearbook in English Studies. She grew up in Southern California and lives in Boston.