Announcing the 2025 Cohort for our Childhood Forced Migration Journalism Project

The Dart Center has announced the cohort for its Reporting Institute on Childhood Forced Migration in Europe, to be held in Paris, France April 4-6, 2025

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, in collaboration with the Columbia Global Paris Center and the Mailman School of Public Health’s Program on Forced Migration and Health (PFMH) and Care and Protection of Children (CPC) Learning Network, is pleased to announce the 27 journalists and four Columbia students selected for its Reporting Institute on Childhood and Forced Migration in Europe.

This three-day training institute will bring together journalists from 11 countries across Europe with leading researchers, clinicians, practitioners and award-winning journalists for expert briefings, panels, and workshops to deepen reporting on children and families impacted by forced migration and displacement. The institute will offer opportunities for knowledge sharing, source development, skill-building and peer-to-peer learning as well as foster a community of journalists across Europe dedicated to reporting on children with insight, accuracy, sensitivity and depth. 

The Childhood Forced Migration Journalism Project is funded by Columbia Global at Columbia University. Columbia Global brings together major global initiatives from across Columbia University to advance knowledge and foster global engagement. It is the latest project of the Dart Center’s Early Childhood Journalism Initiative, created in 2017 to encourage and support science-informed, in-depth reporting on the impact of trauma and adversity on children.

The full cohort, along with brief biographies, are listed below:

Astrig Agopian is a French-Lebanese-Armenian journalist, documentary photographer, and filmmaker. She began her career as a reporter and video journalist covering Brexit, French politics, and the Covid pandemic for French television. Her photography explores the intersection of geopolitics, territory, marginality, and memory. She documents identity, human rights, and the long-term consequences of conflict, most recently through her reporting on the wars in Armenia and Ukraine, and the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh.  

Eleonora Camilli is an Italian journalist. Since 2007 she has worked in the editorial office of Redattore Sociale in Rome, the first Italian press agency, specializing in topics of welfare, marginality, and exclusion. She also writes for La Stampa and several other national newspapers, and focuses on human rights, migration, and contemporary diasporas. 

Natasha Caragnano is an Italian journalist specializing in international affairs with a focus on China. She is currently a reporter at the Foreign Affairs Desk of La Reppublica, where she covers breaking news, in-depth stories, and is part of the Visual Investigative Team, which reviews user-generated content to create multimedia projects. She graduated from Columbia Journalism School in 2024 with an MA in Politics. Her thesis on the Chinese feminist diaspora won the Jean Anderson Social Justice Journalism Award.

Liz Cookman is a correspondent based in Turkey, covering conflict and its human toll. She recently covered the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and was previously based full-time in Ukraine reporting from the frontlines of Russia’s invasion. She began her career in foreign news as a desk editor covering the Middle East and has also covered the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. She won the Best Print Journalist and Best Specialist Journalist at the Freelance Journalism Awards (2024); the Irish Times’ inaugural Dave McKechnie Memorial Journalism Prize; andAmnesty’s Gaby Rado New Journalist Award (2023). She has also been shortlisted for the Prix-Bayeux prize and was the recipient of an IWMF reporting grant.

Malka Dhillon is in her second year at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, specializing in Public Health and Humanitarian Action within the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health. She is committed to helping children during humanitarian emergencies, with a focus on child protection, education, mental health, and psychosocial support. Currently, she is a research study coordinator in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Washington and works as a graduate student research worker at Columbia.

Catherine Ellis is a British freelance journalist who has reported extensively in Colombia and Venezuela. Previously she worked for BBC News in London before taking a sabbatical in 2021 to volunteer with Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, who were forced to leave their homes due to the economic and humanitarian crisis in the country. She now works as a freelance journalist for online media and radio, covering migration, human rights, and sexual exploitation.

Siri Franceschi is an award-winning journalist specializing in global inequality and international relations. She holds an honors degree from Roskilde University and was previously a Fulbright Scholar at The New School. Siri is specialized in cinematic documentary and narrative feature formats, and her reporting has taken her to Algeria, Armenia, Colombia, Ghana, Greenland, India, Nigeria, Norway, South Korea, The Faroe Islands, The Philippines, United Kingdom, and the West Bank.

Efrem Gebreab is a Senior Journalist at BBC World Service with over a decade of experience producing impactful stories and managing diverse teams. He has worked across global news deployments as producer/director, and held roles in Berlin, London, and Senegal, specializing in migration and vulnerable communities.
 

Oleksandra Horchynska is a journalist for NV.UA who writes about gender equality, human rights, LGBT+, domestic violence, inclusion, discrimination, and healthcare. Her reporting on the war in Ukraine covers internally displaced persons, forced migration, and sexual violence. She is a media trainer and consultant on topics including hate speech, non-discriminatory language in media, and gender- sensitive journalism. She also trains journalists in reporting on trauma, including interviewing people who have experienced trauma.

Hanna Jarzabek is a Spanish-Polish documentary photographer based in Madrid. Her work explores themes of discrimination and social challenges in Europe, particularly gender identity and sexual diversity, as well as the radicalization of youth, the rise of far-right movements in Poland, the construction of national identities in post-Soviet regions, and more recently the migratory flows along the European Union’s eastern borders. Her work has been featured in a variety of outlets including El País, Newsweek Japan, and L’Obs, and exhibited in Spain, Poland, Switzerland, Germany, Georgia, and Brazil. 

Samir Jeraj is a policy correspondent for the New Statesman and a commissioning editor at Hyphen. He co-authored The Rent Trap, a book on the housing crisis in the UK and reports on housing, social affairs, immigration, and race in the UK.
 

Preeti Jha is an award-winning longform journalist, based in London, who writes about gender, politics, and human rights.

 

Felix Kessler is a news reporter at Der Spiegel’s politics deskin Berlin. Previously, he worked as a freelance reporter in Athens, Greece, covering migration. He was part of an international team of investigative journalists covering the deadly Pylos migrant boat disaster in the summer of 2023. His pieces have also appeared in Die Zeit.
 

Ruchi Kumar is an independent journalist reporting on conflict, politics, climate, and gender from South Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. 

 

Vânia Maia is a freelance journalist working in radio and print with a focus on human rights, trauma, and migration. Her reporting has taken her from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to refugee camps in Uganda and cyclone-devastated regions of Mozambique. Distinctions include the Lorenzo Natali Prize; finalist for the 2025 True Story Awards; and grants from theEuropean Collaborative Journalism Programme, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and Journalism fund Europe. 

Monica Montero is a journalist and visual storyteller based in Spain. Her work focuses on migration, human rights, and the protection of cultural heritage. She grew up in a Spanish-Korean home and is fluent in English, Spanish, and French. She reported from Calais, France, with support from the Pulitzer Center and holds a Master's degree in Journalism from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in outlets including Al Jazeera, El País, and T Magazine.

Amaka Obioji is the co-founder and managing editor of Diaspora Africa, an independent media organization using research and digital technology to advance migrant justice. In collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), she leads training programs for young journalists reporting on migration and displacement across Africa. Amaka holds a Master’s degree in Media Management from Middlesex University, London. She has worked as a journalist and digital content editor both in Nigeria and the UK for eight years. 

Valentine Pasquesoone is a French multimedia journalist covering international news and feature stories for Franceinfo.fr. She has reported across Europe, the U.S., Mexico, and Brazil. Her migration-focused work includes reporting on undocumented communities, separated families in the U.S., and refugees from Ukraine and Syria in Europe. Valentine is also an adjunct lecturer and academic advisor at Sciences Po Journalism School. She holds a dual degree in journalism from Columbia and Sciences Po, and received a Fulbright grant in 2012. 

Ricardo Pérez-Solero is a journalist with over a decade of experience covering human stories around the world. As a correspondent for the Spanish News Agency EFE in Southeast Asia, he reported on political upheavals, migration, and environmental crises, often focusing on the lives of the most vulnerable. His work has appeared in Al Jazeera, The Guardian, DW News and South China Morning Post. Now based in Madrid, Ricardo continues to explore migration and social issues, promoting narratives that offer a more balanced and nuanced understanding of today’s most pressing issues.

Helena Rodríguez Gómez is an investigative journalist focused on environmental wrongdoings, systemic inequalities and human rights violations through trauma-informed, data-driven reporting. Her work includes the award-winning investigation "Giving Up Your Body to Enter Europe," which exposed strip searches of asylum seekers at EU borders, and "Fleeing Forced Marriages and Ending Up as a Forced Mother," which highlighted gender-based violence faced by migrant women in North Africa. Helena has also contributed to Proyecto Berracas, a project documenting the peacebuilding roles of women survivors of violence in Colombia.

Luisa Rollenhagen is a German-Argentinian freelance journalist based in Berlin. Her reporting focuses on refugees, women's rights, and the rise of the far-right in Europe. Her work has appeared in GQ Magazine, Defector Media, The Guardian, and Deutsche Welle.
 

Ana P. Santos is an award-winning investigative journalist based between Berlin and Manila.  She reports for InfoMigrants, a news platform serving migrants as its primary audience with a focus on issues related to women and unaccompanied minors. Ana also writes a gender and sexuality column for Rappler called “Dash of SAS” (short for Sex and Sensibilities), now a video series about embracing positive sexuality and sexual rights. She holds a postgraduate degree in Gender and Sexuality from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she studied as a Chevening Scholar. 

Sara Selva Ortiz is a Spanish audio reporter and producer based in Madrid. She is currently a political correspondent for Cadena SER, Spain’s leading radio station, where she has spent six years producing in-depth audio stories and covering national and international news. She also has worked as a scriptwriter and producer of audio documentaries. Her recent work has focused on migration and integration, LGBTQ+ issues, and protest movements. In 2024, she graduated from the Master of Arts program at Columbia Journalism School as a Fulbright fellow.

Gagandeep Singh is an investigative journalist at BBC News in Punjab, India. He has reported extensively on the criminal justice system, forced and illegal migration, human rights violations, children's health, public sector corruption, and issues concerning the Sikh community. Gagan received the Alfred Friendly Press Partners – Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project fellowship at the Missouri School of Journalism. Before joining the BBC, Gagan spent five years at the Hindustan Times, a leading English newspaper in India. He is currently pursuing an MA in Politics and Global Affairs at Columbia Journalism School.

Eftichia Soufleri is an investigative journalist and multimedia producer specializing in data-driven storytelling on migration, climate change, technology, and human rights. Since 2020, she has worked at News24.gr, where she produces in-depth reports and multimedia content. Her work has appeared in European investigative media. She holds a degree in Communication and Media from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and trained in data journalism at Columbia University’s LEDE program as an SNF Fellow.

Claudia Steenhard is a Danish journalist, ethnographer, and Fulbright Scholar. After working in political journalism and podcasting, she is pursuing an MA at the Columbia Journalism School.  She holds a B.Sc. in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Copenhagen, a discipline that continues to shape her reporting—most notably in her capstone project, which explores a community in Queens New York and local disputes over sex work, trafficking, and intra-immigrant conflict.

Beatrice Tridimas is a journalist at Context, the media platform created by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Based in London, she reports across the world on climate and migration. Her work also explores the impact of technology on society and socio-economic inclusion.
 

Sofia Turati is an Italy-based freelance journalist specializing in investigative and longform reporting on environmental conflicts and migrant rights. Her work has appeared in L’Espresso, Al Jazeera, Green European Journal, and others. In 2023, she co-founded Marea Media, an organization dedicated to media literacy and in-depth reporting in Southern Italy.

Matthew Ware is in his second year at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health in the Population and Family Health Department, and works as a graduate research assistant with the Care and Protection of Children (CPC) Learning Network. He has a strong interest in the intersection of humanitarian work and journalism and has attended workshops at the Columbia Journalism School and participated in the Conflict & OSINT Reporting course. Before pursuing his Master’s in Public Health, Matthew spent three years at a community health clinic, focusing on program metrics and evaluation while also supporting Street Medicine and homeless health initiatives. 

Jade Wilson is a Dublin-based journalist covering migration, social affairs, housing, and related issues. Her work has appeared  in outlets including The Irish Times, Context (Thomson Reuters Foundation), Bloomberg, and Gay Community News magazine. She has been shortlisted twice for Foreign Coverage of the Year at the Irish Journalism Awards, received a merit certificate from the Justice Media Awards, and was nominated by The Irish Red Cross for a Humanitarian Excellence in Journalism Award in 2024.

Peter Yeung is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Paris. Specializing in on-the-ground reporting, he covers climate, global health, migration, human rights and cities, with a focus on marginalized communities worldwide. His work has appeared in publications including The Guardian, National Geographic, the BBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, Wired, Al Jazeera, CNN, The Atlantic and Bloomberg. He has received recognition and support from The Pulitzer Center, The European Journalism Centre, The Rory Peck Trust, The Society of Environmental Journalists, IJ4EU: Investigative Journalism for Europe, Covering Climate Now Awards and Internews, among others.