Class of 2026

A photo grid of the 2026 Nieman Fellows at Harvard
Top row, from left: Yousur Al-Hlou, James Edwards, Irene Caselli, Ling Wei, Silvia Foster-Frau, Shaun Raviv, Jessica Glenza. Second row: Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman, Kaila Dwinell, Cindy Carcamo, Andrea Marinelli. Third row: Marcela García, Daniel Strauss, Daniel Drepper, Shany Littman. Fourth row: Sotiris Sideris, Simone Iglesias, Yao Hua Law, Suha Halifa, John Hammontree, Lisa Hagen, Wufei Yu.

Headshot of Yousur Al-Hlou

Yousur Al-Hlou

Yousur Al-Hlou is a visual journalist who most recently worked for The New York Times, reporting on international breaking news and investigations. She uses field reporting, visual evidence gathering, and original cinematography to investigate crimes in conflict zones and has documented human rights abuses and their impact on civilians in Syria, Gaza, and Ukraine.  Her work with colleagues covering Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was awarded a 2022 George Polk Award, the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, and a 2024 DuPont Award. Previously, she was a global fellow for The Associated Press in Jerusalem, an associate producer at the UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program, and an associate producer for Al Jazeera’s documentary show “Fault Lines.”

Al-Hlou is studying how international humanitarian law has failed to prevent armed conflict, and the challenges for accountability mechanisms in prosecuting war crimes despite visual evidence.

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Headshot of Cindy Carcamo

Cindy Carcamo

Cindy Carcamo is a California-based journalist who most recently worked as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times’ Food section. She previously covered immigration as a Metro reporter for the Times and served as Arizona bureau chief and national correspondent in the Southwest. A Los Angeles native, she has reported from Argentina, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. From 2003-2012, she was a staff writer at the Orange County Register, where she covered immigration, the environment, politics, and law enforcement issues. She also has written for Reuters, The Guardian, and El País. In 2023, Carcamo was honored as one of the ten most influential journalists in California by the Latino Journalists of California-CCNMA. She also was a 1999 Chips Quinn Scholar.

She is studying how two centuries of immigration have shaped the American palate and the U.S. food industry.

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Headshot of Irene Caselli

Irene Caselli

Irene Caselli is an Italian writer and multimedia journalist with two decades of experience in radio, TV, and print. She currently focuses on early childhood, caregivers, and reproductive rights, and leads the Early Childhood Journalism Initiative at the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma, formerly known as the Dart Center. Previously, she worked as a foreign correspondent in Latin America for the BBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, and other publications. In 2019 she launched an early childhood beat for The Correspondent and later turned that reporting into The First 1,000 Days newsletter. She speaks six languages and is currently learning Greek.

Caselli is examining media coverage of young children and ways to increase and improve coverage of the issues affecting them.

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Headshot of Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman

Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman

Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman is a Ghanaian journalist who works as a senior reporter and news presenter at the EIB Network (GHOne TV and StarrFM) in Accra and a freelance correspondent for the U.S. radio program “The World.” Dini-Osman has reported widely from India, the United States, Rwanda, Malawi, Nigeria and Sierra Leone with a focus on global health inequities, social justice and sustainable development. He has investigated discrimination against minority groups in healthcare, the social and environmental impacts of climate change, and the inequitable global distribution of life-saving medications. He is a multiple grantee of the Pulitzer Center and a seven-time recipient of Ghana’s National Journalism Award. His other honors include the European Commission’s 2018 Lorenzo Natali Media Prize, the International Center for Journalists’ 2021 Global Health Crisis Award for his COVID-19 reporting and the 2022 Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications from the National Academies. In 2024, he received a Covering Climate Now Journalism Award.

Dini-Osman is studying how African newsrooms can improve coverage of marginalized groups despite legal and cultural barriers.

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Daniel Drepper

Daniel Drepper was most recently head of investigative cooperation between the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the German public broadcasters NDR and WDR. An investigative reporter for more than 15 years, he co-founded the investigative nonprofit Correctiv and was editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News Germany. Since 2021, he has served as chair of Netzwerk Recherche, Germany’s association of investigative journalists. Drepper has won numerous awards for his work and was named editor-in-chief of the year by Medium Magazine, a publication that also named him and his team as journalists of the year in 2021. He investigates topics ranging from abuse of power to environmental crimes and has written two books — “Row Zero: Violence and Abuse of Power in the Music Industry” and a another book about poor working conditions in German nursing homes. He has a master’s degree in investigative journalism from Columbia Journalism School.

Drepper is exploring how journalism collaborations can address the climate crisis.

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Headshot of Kaila Dwinell

Kaila Dwinell

Kaila Dwinell is an audience development manager at NBC News Group, where she leads digital growth strategies across network-owned channels and social and emerging platforms. An expert in backend systems for audience engagement and marketing technology, she specializes in building the infrastructure that supports sustainable growth and retention. She has developed editorial products that drive user habits and retention, including several newsletters: MSNBC’s Deadline: Legal, NBC News’ From the Politics Desk, and This is TODAY. She has played a key role in launching and optimizing direct-to-consumer initiatives such as the Start TODAY app and the MSNBC app and worked on the upcoming NBC News subscription app. She has contributed to record growth in monthly active users across NBCNews.com, MSNBC.com, and TODAY.com by focusing on innovative distribution methods, platform strategies, and technical systems that power long-term engagement amid the evolving landscape of digital news.

She is researching alternative news-distribution models and how they can be leveraged to rebuild trust in journalism, with a focus on applying AI technologies within audience management systems to strengthen newsroom workflows and optimize reader engagement.

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Headshot of James Edwards

James Edwards

James Edwards is a New York-based journalist who has worked in a variety of producing, reporting, and digital production roles at HBO, Wondery, PBS, and several other public media outlets. He is the host and reporter for the upcoming podcast “Heat List,” which explores the human toll of Chicago’s predictive policing program. He also hosted and reported the “Frontline PBS” podcast “Un(re)solved,” about Civil Rights-era cold cases involving racist killings. “Un(re)solved,” won a national Edward R. Murrow Award and an Emmy Award and was named the Narrative Nonfiction Official Selection at the 2021 Tribeca Festival. Edwards has worked as a news producer for the HBO late-night series “Game Theory with Bomani Jones” and as a researcher on TV, film, and documentary projects, including the feature films “Candyman” and “The Good Nurse” and the HBO series “Lovecraft Country.” He studied improvisational theater at ImprovBoston and playwriting at HB Studio in New York.

At Harvard, he is examining documentary theater and how the stage can be a medium for investigative journalism and storytelling.

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Silvia Foster-Frau

Silvia Foster-Frau is a national investigative reporter covering immigration for The Washington Post, where she broke news on the migrants held by the U.S. in Guantanamo Bay and changes to the Trump administration’s refugee admissions program. She also reported in depth on the migrants held in El Salvador’s megaprison, immigration arrests, and family separations. For years, she has covered mass shootings, including anchoring two stories in the Post’s “American Icon” series on the AR-15 semi-automatic rifles, which won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. Foster-Frau additionally wrote the 2024 investigative series “Toxic Taps” on access to safe drinking water in marginalized communities. She previously worked at the San Antonio Express-News in Texas, where she covered immigration and border affairs and was the lead reporter on the 2017 Sutherland Springs mass shooting. She is the former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists D.C. Chapter. Her work has also been recognized by the White House Correspondents Association, NAHJ, Best of the West, and Texas Managing Editors.

She is studying global and historic immigration and what can be done to improve coverage of immigrant communities.

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Headshot of Marcela García

Marcela García

Marcela García is a Boston Globe opinion columnist and associate editor whose commentaries focus on immigration, social inequities, and Hispanic issues. In 2023, she launched ¡Mira!, the Globe’s first bilingual weekly newsletter, written in English and Spanish. She also has worked as a special contributor to the Boston Business Journal and was the editor of El Planeta, Boston’s largest Spanish-language publication. In 2025, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing along with two colleagues. In 2023, García was recognized by the New England Chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists with its first-ever Impact Award for her “thoroughly reported” columns on issues affecting Latinos. Originally from Monterrey, México, García has lived in Boston for more than two decades.

She is studying the population of undocumented women in the U.S. through an interdisciplinary lens that includes the law and economics

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Headshot of Jessica Glenza

Jessica Glenza

Jessica Glenza is a senior health reporter for the Guardian US, based in New York. Her wide-ranging reporting covers medicine, law, business, and politics, with recent investigations into medical debt collection and consolidation among nonprofit hospital chains. She has a special interest in health financing, scientific integrity, and inequality. Previously, Glenza worked at a small newspaper in Connecticut, where her reporting on bullying and sexual assault became the basis for a federal lawsuit and won multiple awards. A native of St. Petersburg, Florida, her personal work includes a print-only literary journal about the state called South of the South. She is studying law, science, and history in an examination of healthcare financing.

She is studying the intersection of law, medicine, and politics in her examination of healthcare financing in the U.S.

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Headshot of Lisa Hagen

Lisa Hagen

Lisa Hagen is a national reporter for NPR, where she covers the mainstreaming of extreme or unconventional beliefs. Based in Atlanta, she writes radio and web stories on topics including conspiracism, disinformation, and Christian nationalism. Hagen won the Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting in 2021 for the NPR investigative podcast “No Compromise,” co-reported and co-hosted with Chris Haxel. The series explores fractures in the world of American gun rights activism that pulled gun culture to the far right. The podcast emerged from Hagen’s work for WABE in Atlanta, where she covered gun policy, and criminal and social justice in Georgia.

She is studying the history of Christianity and its intersection with politics to better understand current-day populist movements

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Headshot of Suha Halifa

Suha Halifa

Suha Halifa is the senior editor of The Times of Israel Arabic and for the past decade, has edited and published Israeli news for a predominantly Palestinian audience. She has covered wars, elections, hate crimes, and occasionally culture and environment from her Jerusalem office. Before working in print, she was a news producer at a private production company covering the Israeli Palestinian conflict. She has also freelanced for NPR.

She is studying the effect of Arabic and Hebrew terminology in news reporting on public opinion, researching how newsroom composition affects language trends and news coverage.

Headshot of John Hammontree

John Hammontree

John Hammontree is the executive producer of podcasting for the Alabama Media Group, based in Birmingham Alabama. He oversees news and sports programming and is executive producer of “American Shrapnel,” a podcast series about Eric Robert Rudolph, the man convicted of  bombing the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Hammontree was a co-founder of Reckon News and produced “Unjustifiable,” a podcast series that examines an overlooked moment of civil rights history following the fatal 1979 shooting of a 20-year-old Black woman by a Birmingham police officer. The series won a 2021 National Edward R. Murrow Award for best podcast. He also was senior producer and showrunner of the CNN podcast, “Downside Up.” Hammontree is a two-time winner of the INMA award for Best Use of Video, winner of the Green Eyeshade Award for Best Opinion Writing in the Southeast, and he was a finalist for the Walker Stone Award for Opinion Writing.

He is studying the rise of sports media and influencers and their effect on young men and the spread of misinformation.

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Headshot of Simone Iglesia

Simone Iglesias

Simone Iglesias is an economy and government reporter for Bloomberg News in Brasília, Brazil. She joined Bloomberg in 2017 after working for Folha de S. Paulo and O Globo, two of the country’s most influential newspapers. She has covered a pivotal period in Brazil’s political history, including President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s first two terms and his downfall; Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, and her impeachment; the rise of far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro, his tumultuous term  in office and his attempt to overturn the 2022 election result; and ultimately, Lula’s come back. With deep knowledge of Brazilian governments over the past three decades, Iglesias has also followed the intergovernmental BRICS bloc as well as the South American trade bloc Mercosur and bilateral agreements between Brazil and dozens of countries. In 2023, Iglesias and her colleagues received the Hinrich Foundation Award for Distinguished Reporting on Trade given by the National Press Foundation.

She is studying the rise of China’s influence in Brazil and South America and its impact on U.S. standing in the region.

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Headshot of Yao Hua Law

Yao Hua Law

Yao-Hua Law is a science and environment journalist who co-founded and is editor of Macaranga Media, Malaysia’s only environmental news outlet. Based in Kuala Lumpur, he was twice selected as a Rainforest Investigations Fellow at the Pulitzer Center. His stories on Malaysia prompted a government investigation into illegal deforestation and led an Indigenous community to fight for its land rights in court. In the course of his work, he analyses data, writes narrative stories, builds interactive webpages, and teaches journalism. His honors include the Sigma Award for data journalism, the One World Media Prize Award, the Said Zahari Young Journalist Award, and several Malaysian Press Institute Awards.

He is studying new financial models and community participation for a reader-supported newsroom.

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Headshot of Shany Littman

Shany Littman

Shany Littman is a magazine and feature writer for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. She has covered social and political issues, including the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. Based in Tel Aviv, she also writes opinion pieces and has her own column on cinema. Littman previously served as a culture correspondent for Haaretz, and as a researcher for documentaries. With an academic background in philosophy, history, and film, she produced the documentary “Nobody Home,” which tells the story of Jerusalem’s oldest cemetery. Littman has participated in peacebuilding programs with Palestinians and Israelis.

She is investigating the creation and spread of fake atrocity stories during wartime, focusing on their origins and impact.

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Headshot of Andrea Marinelli

Andrea Marinelli

Andrea Marinelli is the deputy editor of the foreign affairs desk at Corriere della Sera, Italy’s leading newspaper. Based in Milan, he helps two editors coordinate a newsroom of 12 people and a dozen correspondents, and writes about U.S. politics, culture, and society. He also co-edits a daily foreign affairs newsletter called America-Cina and co-wrote a daily military briefing on the war in Ukraine. He first worked for Corriere della Sera in 2011 as a freelance writer based in New York. In 2015, he joined the data journalism unit before moving to the digital newsroom, the investigative reporting unit, called Dataroom, and then the foreign desk, where he has been since 2019. He won the Montanelli Prize for his writings about America and the USSI prize for sportswriting for an article on Megan Rapinoe. In 2012, he covered the U.S. presidential campaign by traveling across the country using Greyhound buses, couch surfing, hitchhiking, and crowdfunding. He self-published a book about that experience, “L’ospite.”

He is exploring how coverage of the U.S. and its foreign policy is changing alongside the shifts in American politics and society.

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Headshot of Shaun Raviv

Shaun Raviv

Shaun Raviv is an independent longform audio and print journalist based in Atlanta, Georgia. He’s written feature stories for Wired, The Washington Post, Smithsonian, The Intercept, Deadspin, BuzzFeed, Columbia Journalism Review, The Ringer, and many other publications. He has covered a wide range of topics, from a deadly police tactic called the PIT maneuver, to the history of facial recognition technology, to the blurry ethics of genetic diseases and patient privacy, to a series of murders in Southern Africa. Raviv also has written dozens of podcast episodes and created the series “Noble,” which The New Yorker named the best podcast of 2024.

He is studying the growing field of AI safety, and whether advanced artificial intelligence can be safe for humanity.

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Headshot of Sotiris Sideris

Sotiris Sideris

Sotiris Sideris is the data editor at the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism (CCIJ) in the U.S. and Reporters United in Greece. He leads global investigations and training in data, OSINT, and AI, with a dedicated focus on accountability reporting. His work focuses on housing and land injustice, fossil fuels, the climate crisis, corporate malpractices, disinformation, migration, and human rights. He also teaches data journalism at the University of Athens and online media at Hochschule Macromedia in Berlin. In 2015, he co-founded AthensLive, Greece’s first English-language nonprofit outlet. He and his teams have won several awards, including the European Press Prize for Innovation.

He is exploring the use of generative AI to enhance accountability reporting and reinforce audience trust.

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Headshot of Daniel Strauss

Daniel Strauss

Daniel Strauss most recently was a national political reporter for CNN based in Washington, D.C., His reporting focused on major political spending spanning the country and the key players in national politics. Previously, he was a features writer for The New Republic, where he broke major investigative and national news for the magazine’s website on topics ranging from national politics to international soccer. He additionally covered Washington from an international perspective as a senior political reporter for The Guardian and was a campaigns and elections reporter for Politico, where he also wrote profiles.

He is studying how the rising use of cryptocurrency will affect federal campaigns, elections and policymaking.

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Ling Wei

Ling Wei is a Beijing-based freelance editor with Phoenix News and an independent writer. Her work focuses on xenophobia, online violence against women, elder care, and social polarization. She previously served as an editorial consultant for Real Connection, a longform journalism platform in China. Before that, she spent nine years writing feature stories for Esquire China, Portrait Magazine, and other publications, documenting individual lives amid social change. Her reporting has won multiple honors, including two Feature of the Year awards from the Tencent Journalism Awards program and the Literary Newcomer Award from People’s Literature Publishing House.

She is studying the intersection of xenophobia and the internet and how journalists can use storytelling to broaden perspectives and reduce division.

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Headshot of Wufei Yu

Wufei Yu

Wufei Yu is a Hong Kong-based journalist who most recently reported for Sanlian Lifeweek Magazine, covering sports, climate and the environment, outdoor adventures, and breaking news events in China and beyond. Prior to that, he worked in New Mexico, where he wrote for Outside Magazine, High Country News, The New York Times, and Searchlight New Mexico, among other publications. His series of investigations about Chinese trafficking victims on illegal marijuana farms in the American Southwest won first place in investigative reporting from Best of the West in 2021. In 2022, he received the Best Colour Piece in Writing Award from the International Sports Press Association and a nomination for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting for his co-written feature about a deadly ultramarathon race in Northwestern China.

He is studying the role of local and Indigenous communities in conservation and climate change policy, with a focus on China and the Chinese diaspora.

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