Current Fellows
and their Area of Interest
| Elena Agarkova • RUSSIA • May 2008 - 2010 |
Elena will be living in Siberia, studying management of natural resources and the relationship between Siberia's natural riches and its people. Previously, Elena was a Legal Fellow at the University of Washington's School of Law, at the Berman Environmental Law Clinic. She has clerked for Honorable Cynthia M. Rufe of the federal district court in Philadelphia, and has practiced commercial litigation at the New York office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP. Elena was born in Moscow, Russia, and has volunteered for environmental non-profits in the Lake Baikal region of Siberia. She graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 2001, and has received a bachelor's degree in political science from Barnard College. |
| Pooja Bhatia • HAITI • September 2008 - 2010 |
Pooja attended Harvard as an undergraduate, and then worked for the Wall Street Journal for a few years. She graduated from Harvard Law School. She was appointed Harvard Law School Satter Human Rights Fellow in 2007 and worked as an attorney with the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, which advocates and litigates on behalf of Haiti’s poor. As an ICWA Fellow, Pooja will explore Haiti more deeply and write more broadly about the country. |
| Eve Fairbanks • SOUTH AFRICA • May 2009 - 2011 |
Eve is a New Republic staff writer interested in character and in how individuals fit themselves into new or changing societies. Through that lens, she will be writing about medicine and politics in the new South Africa. At the New Republic, she covered the first Democratic Congress since 1992 and the 2008 presidential race; her book reviews have also appeared in The New York Times. She graduated with a degree in political science from Yale, where she also studied music. |
| Ezra Fieser • GUATEMALA • January 2008 - 2010 |
Ezra is interested in economic and political changes in Central America. He is an ICWA fellow living in Guatemala where he will write about the country’s rapidly changing economic structure and the effects on its politics, culture and people. He was formerly the deputy city editor for The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal, a staff writer for Springfield (Mass.) Republican and a Pulliam Fellow at The Arizona Republic. He is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston. |
| Suzy Hansen • TURKEY • April 2007 - September 2009 |
Suzy will be writing about politics and religion in Turkey. A former editor at the New York Observer, her work has also appeared in Salon, the New York Times Book Review, the Nation, and other publications. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999. |
| Cecilia Kline • CENTRAL AMERICA • January 2009 - 2011 |
Cecilia´s passion is hanging out with kids on the streets and in juvenile prisons learning about ways youth experience and survive violence. She is currently in Honduras collaborating with different NGOs pursuing her interest in the causes and innovative outreach methods to at-risk youth, gangs and violence which she will continue in various Central American cities. She has worked internationally with detained youth since college, integrating legal and social influences, backed by her studies in Psychology and Sociology at Georgetown, degree in Child Law from Loyola and masters in Social Service from University of Chicago. |
| Derek Mitchell • INDIA • September 2007 - August 2009 |
Derek will be exploring the social and cultural impact of economic change in India. Previously, he was a Fulbright scholar in India at the Gandhi Peace Foundation. He has worked as a foreign policy research coordinator at George Washington University's Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies and as a political organizer in New Hampshire. Derek graduated with a degree in religion from Columbia University. |
| Raphael Soifer • BRAZIL • March 2007 - 2009 |
An actor, director, playwright, musician and theatre educator, Raphi Soifer is a Donors’ Fellow studying, as a participant and observer, the relationship between the arts and social change in communities throughout Brazil. He has worked as a performer and director in the United States and Brazil, and has taught performance to prisoners and underprivileged youth through People’s Palace Projects in Rio de Janeiro and Community Works in San Francisco. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Theatre Studies and Anthropology from Yale University. |
Former Fellow Spotlight
Tyrone Turner
Tyrone and his wife, Susan Sterner, were Fellows based in Brazil from 1998 through 2000. Tyrone took photographs and wrote about Brazil’s youth, poverty, culture, and religion. His documentation of glue-addicted street kids in the northeastern city of Recife was honored in the 2001 Pictures of the Year competition. Their newsletters are available in our archive.
Since the fellowship, Tyrone and his family have lived in Arlington, VA. He is a freelance photographer who has traveled extensively shooting stories focusing on social and environmental issues. In 2003, the Soros Foundation awarded him a Justice Media Fellowship to photograph the lives of youths incarcerated in the adult correctional system. For the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, he has documented families and health around the United States.
As a contributing photographer for National Geographic Magazine, he has produced stories on the disappearing wetlands of Louisiana (October, 2004); increasing hurricane threats (August, 2005); the coasts of the United States (July, 2006); a special issue on hurricane Katrina (Fall 2005); and the rebuilding of New Orleans (August, 2007).
Most recently, Tyrone shot the cover story on energy efficiency and conservation for National Geographic (March, 2009). For the story, he used a thermal imaging camera in order to explore the world of energy loss, from houses and cars to appliances and household electrical plugs. The link to the Nat Geo website is: ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/energy-conservation/miller-text.
Tyrone will return to Brazil this year for National Geographic as part of a story on the legacy of slavery in the Americas.
Tyrone holds a BA in International Relations and an MA in Comparative Politics from Georgetown University. He is a project mentor for the photojournalism program at the Corcoran School of Art + Design and a fellow with the News Literacy Project.
See his photos at: www.tyronefoto.com.
