Current Fellows

Hannah Armstrong • WEST AFRICA • February 2012 -  2014

Based in the Sahel Region of West Africa, Hannah will research state-building and security in that area. A recent graduate of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies with an M.A. Distinction in International Studies and Diplomacy, Hannah previously worked as a freelance foreign correspondent, reporting on politics, economic development, and security from Morocco, Mauritania, Niger, and Haiti. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, the Christian Science Monitor, and Monocle Magazine, among others. Fluent in French and proficient in Moroccan Colloquial and Modern Standard Arabic, she served as a Fulbright Scholar in Morocco, where she researched tensions between Islamist feminism and liberal feminism in civil society. She holds a B.A. in Political Philosophy from New College of Florida.

Amelia Frank-Vitale • MEXICO • April 2012 -  2014

Based in Mexico, Amelia will study and write about unauthorized migrants en route. She is looking at the intersections among the war on drugs, organized crime groups, party politics, and the varieties of violence faced by Central American migrants who are passing through Mexico in hopes of reaching the United States. Amelia graduated from Yale in 2005 with a degree in Anthropology. A former union organizer, she completed a master’s degree in Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs at American University in 2011.

Jori Lewis • WEST AFRICA • January 2011 -  2013

Based in Senegal, Jori will investigate and write about food security issues in West Africa—looking at a range of questions from production to consumption. An anthropology graduate from the University of Chicago and French speaker, Jori also holds a graduate journalism degree from UC Berkeley.

Shannon Sims • BRAZIL •  2012 -  2014

Forest and Society Fellow
A 2011 graduate of The University of Texas School of Law, Shannon has a passion for photography, travel and the environment. She earned a B.A. in International Relations with a concentration in Politics from Pomona College in 2005. She also completed coursework at Cattolica University in Milan, Italy; Istanbul Bilgi University in Istanbul, Turkey; and University of the Aegean in Mytiline, Greece. Following the BP Oil Spill in April 2010, she was nominated for an environmental law internship with the United States Coast Guard District 8 Legal Division in New Orleans, where she helped draft unique legal regulations defining the role of the Coast Guard during a drilling moratorium. In 2009, through the Rapoport Fellowship from the Rapoport Center for International Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas School of Law, Shannon completed a legal clerkship with the Attorney General's Office of the Ministry of the Environment of Brazil (IBAMA). She researched concessions management in environmentally protected areas along the coast, and documented small Brazilian fishing communities. As an ICWA Forest and Society Fellow in Brazil, Shannon will later this year begin researching and writing about stakeholder involvement in the governance of the South Atlantic Coastal Forest, the Mata Atlantica—a vast and important, yet heavily degraded, forest belt running along Brazil’s eastern seaboard.

Neri Zilber • Israel • April 2011 -  2013

Neri is looking into and writing about Israel’s complicated and diverse society and even more complicated political system. Neri is a writer on international politics—mainly Middle Eastern—and was based in New York City. He was previously a researcher and analyst specializing on the Middle East at the US Library of Congress, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the World Jewish Congress. Raised and educated in Israel, Singapore, Spain, and the United States, he holds a bachelor’s degree from the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University and a master’s degree from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.