Emma Harrison

Emma Harrison, graduated with a degree in political science and  multidisciplinary studies ( Africana,  leadership, and  women’s and gender). She was an ambassador for the Honors College and a former member of the Student Government Association and Model United Nations, and a two-time competitor in the Dancing with Our Mountaineer Stars. 

Harrison was an ardent advocate for prison reform who has been devoted to prison education and exoneration of the wrongly convicted people since she started her internship in 2016 with the  West Virginia Innocence Project at the WVU  College of Law. Her experience with the WVIP has led her to a life-long career path dedicated to helping incarcerated people and their families in her home state. 

The following year she enrolled in the  WVU Department of Sociology and Anthropology Inside-Out Prison Exchange class, a program that brings college students together with incarcerated men and women to study as peers—humanizing the incarcerated and their issues. She later joined the class through the  WVU Department of English and has served several times as a student and teaching assistant at the Federal Correctional Institution Morgantown and FCI Hazelton. 

Here, she discovered the need and desire that incarcerated men had for technology, education and books. 

She also volunteered her time as an instructor at FCI Morgantown and the United States Penitentiary Hazelton as a Think Tank member, a group of incarcerated, non-incarcerated and faculty who meet regularly inside the Federal Correctional Institution Hazelton to develop projects that facilitate learning and build community across profound social differences.