Elizabeth Neuffer Fellows

Priyanka Borpujari, the 2012-13 IWMF Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow, is an independent journalist based in Mumbai, India. She has reported on the ways in wh...

Jackee Budesta Batanda is a Ugandan journalist who has reported on the vicious acid attacks of women as “revenge crimes” and the targeted murders of albinos.  Amid a brutal crackdown on journalists covering anti-government protests, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has denounced local and international media outlets as "enemies." In this atmosphere, Batanda became determined to report and research “closing media spaces in African nations” during the fellowship.  Batanda, 31, a reporter for the Global Press Institute, plans to create a reporting skills workshop for Ugandan journalists after her seven-month fellowship. 

Mehmood is a journalist in the Lahore bureau of Express 24/7 Television in Pakistan, where she creates news features and special reports on courts, crime, human rights, politics, socio-economic issues, health, environment and culture. Throughout her career, Mehmood has reported on topics such as women’s rights, freedom of speech and political unrest. She has covered the survivors and victims of terrorist attacks, suicide bombings and hostage sieges carried out by militants in Lahore. Mehmood has also reported on internally displaced people who left Northwest Pakistan as a result of insurgency by terrorists and military offensives.

A journalist for more than two decades, Davies has worked for the BBC since 2000. She has reported for domestic and world service radio, domestic and world television, and has produced online and current affairs documentaries. Davies has worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan and Zaire, among other countries. She has covered topics such as the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the civil war in Sudan and the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Somalia in the early 1990s.

Colombian journalist Manrique writes for Comunicaciones Aliadas, a non-governmental online magazine that focuses on Latin American news, particularly human rights. She is based in Colombia, but the magazine is based in Peru. Manrique has covered subjects such as kidnapping, drug trafficking and refugees. She has also interviewed victims of violence in Colombia, including people who have been injured by landmines, combatants who have returned to society, children in armed groups and indigenous people defending their land. In the course of her journalistic work, Manrique has received multiple death threats and was once forced into exile in Peru for eight months. She is interested in continuing to investigate Colombian paramilitaries and their ties with multinational corporations.

Sara was an anchor for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s national news program “Landline.” She started at ABC in 1993, reporting from Africa as a foreign correspondent from 2000-2005. Sara is also an author; she took leave from her reporting job in 2005 to write a book on African women called GoGo Mama. Sara, who has covered topics such as poverty, war, political unrest, ethnic violence and violence against women, began work on her next GoGo Mama book in Asia in 2008.

Ahmed was a reporter in McClatchy’s (formerly Knight Ridder) Baghdad bureau. Born and raised in Iraq, she left the country to escape the harsh sanctions that followed the Gulf War in 1991, working as a translator in the United Arab Emirates, Tunisia and Libya. In 2002 she returned to Iraq for a visit but could not leave because of the impending war. So in April 2003 she began working as a journalist, first as a translator and researcher for The Washington Post and then as a translator and reporter for McClatchy starting in 2004.

Elton covered Latin America as a freelance reporter. For four years, she was based in Guatemala, where she reported on human rights, labor issues, trade and migration, among other subjects. From 1997 - 2000, she was a stringer in Peru. Elton’s work has appeared in news media outlets such as The Miami Herald, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time and Mother Jones magazines, and National Public Radio. She holds bachelor’s degree in political science from Middlebury College.