Connie McGuire received her PhD in socio-cultural anthropology with the graduate feminist emphasis from UC Irvine, a Masters in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas, Austin and a BA in Sociology from Vassar College. Connie works in the fields of the Anthropology of Law and Policy, Science and Technology Studies, and Transnational Feminist Studies. In her book project, which builds on her dissertation research, Connie examines how, why and to what effects criminal gangs from Central American and Mexico came to be a population of concern to U.S. federal policymakers in the mid 2000s.  As a Fellow with the Community Knowledge Project, Connie is conducting engaged work in a Southern California City, supporting a policy-oriented initiative to change broadly defined health outcomes.  She is particularly interested in the role of healing in the process of political transformation.