The Gates Cambridge Trust awarded Will McInerney with a scholarship earlier this year. The Chapel Hill native is one of 91 other scholars to receive the prestigious postgraduate award.
McInernery was selected thanks to his work in the peace education field. The UNC alumnus blended his Peace, War, and Defense degree with studies of spoken word poetry to create various programs. He co-founded the Sacrificial Poets, a Chapel Hill-Durham based educational program, while writing stories for WUNC-FM about poetic interpretations to conflict.
McInerney says this draw to the arts helped him discover his desire to teach and create peace.
"Statistically, the vast majority of violent crime is committed by men," he says. "I found that we need better educational interventions, better educational opportunities to challenge the culture that allows that to exist. So, through my own education, through my own experience in the classroom teaching art and peace education and through my experience as a journalist covering issues around peace and conflict, I became more and more dedicated to the idea that this is an issue I wanted to dedicate myself to."
This led McInerney to return to UNC, where he created and taught a men's violence prevention program using approaches of spoken word poetry. He then attended the University of Bradford in England and received his Master of the Arts degree. McInerney says these teaching experiences had profound impacts on his work.
"I found a lot of resonance and joy in the classroom doing that kind of work," he says, "particularly in our local community here and around the world."
McInerney credits his hometown for helping shape his own mentalities on creative thinking, saying it's a prime example of creative culture despite still needing improvement elsewhere.
"I'm fortunate to call Chapel Hill my home, and I'm fortunate to be raised in a context where those creative and critical ideas were not just fostered but encouraged," says McInerney. "I'm a proud product of that. Chapel Hill isn't a utopia because it has its own [violence] problems and there's a lot of work that needs to be done here. But I am thankful and grateful for the people in this community who have helped me get to where I am today."
With the Gates Cambridge scholarship, McInerney will return to England to start research for his doctorate degree at the University of Cambridge. He will continue to focus on how creative practices can help men establish a mental framework to challenge the cultural norms, attitudes, and behaviors of violence. McInerney will begin this work in the fall.
Photo via Will McInerney's website.
