The South Asia Center and Middle East Center congratulate Penn students Rachel Townzen and Natalie Au on being selected as the Pulitzer International Student Reporting
Fellows for 2016. As recipients of the fellowship they will be reporting from Jordan and India on issues that have gone unreported or under-reported in the mainstream American media. On their reporting trips abroad, they will receive editorial support and mentorship from Pulitzer Center journalists and editors. Their work will be published and they will receive a $500 award.
The Campus Consortium Partnership between Penn's Middle East Center, South Asia Center and the Pulitzer Center features programming at Penn to foster broader discussions and nuanced analysis of concerns that span disciplines. Journalists visit campus to share about their global reporting projects and International Student Reporting Fellows help illuminate another part of the world for the Penn community and beyond.
Rachel Townzen is a Masters of Social Work student at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Social Policy & Practice, also pursuing an interdisciplinary certificate in Global Human Rights. She is the rising president of the Social Work Advocates for Immigrant Rights, secretary of the AGBU-Young Professionals chapter in Philadelphia, and member of Penn Law's International Human Rights Advocates. Since graduating from Boston College in 2014, Rachel has worked in various capacities with refugees and asylees in the US and Armenia. She will be working as a knowledge management intern with UNICEF Jordan this summer as she completes her reporting project, which will explore issues related to obtaining civil documentation, protecting family identity, and preventing statelessness among refugees. She hopes to spend her career serving refugees and others in need of international protection, with a special interest in using data analytics to shape legislative and policy decisions to advance human rights.
Natalie Au is a junior double majoring in Political Science and East Asian Area Studies, and minoring in Gender, Sexuality, & Women's Studies. On campus, she is the founder and director of the Penn Human Rights Conference, and has served on the boards of Penn for Liberty in North Korea, Seneca International, and Phi Alpha Delta Pre-Law Fraternity. Off campus, Natalie has worked with the One Country Two Systems Research Institute in Hong Kong, as well as Mother's Choice, a reproductive justice non-profit. She is very interested in the intersection between social justice and technology, and is very excited to learn more about the topic in researching for her project, "DevelopHER: Women, Tech, and Social Impact in India"!
To read about the work of past Penn Pulitzer fellows, please visit the Pulitzer Center website: http://pulitzercenter.org/campus-consortium/university-pennsylvania