Women Journalists in Conflict Zones: Stories from Ground Zero

The Conflict Resolution Collective, Women in Leadership, and the Progressive Security Working Group at Columbia SIPA are excited to present Women Journalists in Conflict Zones: Stories from Ground Zero.

Please join us for an engaging panel discussion with three renowned journalists as they share their first-hand experiences covering areas affected by violence, including Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. This event will be moderated by Anya Schiffrin, the director of the Technology, Media, and Communications at SIPA and a lecturer on global media, innovation, and human rights.

To learn more about our speakers, view their full bios here. 

Anne Barnard is an American journalist who works for The New York Times. She was its Beirut Bureau chief from 2012 to 2018. She was born in New York City, studied at Yale University, and from 1993 to 1995 reported for The Moscow Times. She then worked for The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1996 to 2000, and for The Boston Globe as Baghdad Bureau Chief and Middle East Bureau Chief from 2003 until 2007. 

Azmat Khan is an award-winning investigative journalist. Her work includes a 36 immersive film produced with PBS FRONTLINE,  taking viewers inside in the village of Al-Bara as Syrian jets drop bombs on homes 300 meters away from filmmaker Olly Lambert. Furthermore, in what was published with the New York Times as The Uncounted, Azmat Khan teamed up with Anand Gopal to investigate, document, and report the true civilian death toll of the U.S.-led war against ISIS. Their shocking findings revealed that the number of civilian deaths due to airstrikes is largely underreported by the American-led coalition and that there has been a consistent failure by the coalition to investigate claims or to make previously mandated “sympathy payments” to survivors.

Valerie Plesch is an independent photojournalist and documentary photographer. From 2014-2019, she was based in Pristina, Kosovo focusing on the aftermath of war. In 2014 she reported from Kabul, Afghanistan during the presidential election for USA Today and produced other feature stories, including one about the training of the Afghan National Army.  Before pursuing her passion for visual storytelling, Valerie worked for eight years for an international development consulting company in Washington, D.C. that provides technical assistance to countries around the world on behalf of USAID. Her work took her to post-conflict and post-disaster countries including Afghanistan, where she lived from 2010-2011, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Haiti.
 

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Co-hosted with: Policy and Security Working Group, SIPA Women in Leadership