Megan McBride, Ph.D.

Megan K. McBride is an expert on targeted violence, with particular expertise on domestic terrorism. Her recent work focuses on psychosocial risk factors associated with the perpetrators of such acts, and evaluating the efficacy of programs designed to prevent future violent attacks. She has also conducted and published research on vulnerability and resilience to false narratives.

McBride is a former Research Associate at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she focused on evaluating the efficacy of programs to prevent targeted violence, funded by the Department of Homeland Security, the National Institute of Justice, and NATO. She has taught courses on terrorism and violence at Brown University and Boston College, and her work has been published in journals such as Terrorism and Political Violence and Homeland Security Affairs. Before joining CNA, McBride was an intelligence analyst at the National Security Agency for five years, some of that time in Iraq.

McBride has a PhD in religious studies from Brown University, where her research focused on the relationship between religion and terrorism. She also has a Master of Arts in government from Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Arts from the Great Books program at St. John's College, and a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Drew University.