Each year, we sponsor a select number of journalists from the US and Europe for an independent transatlantic trip to research stories relevant to our work on Global Development Policy, Climate & Environmental Policy, Democracy, Digital Policy, and Foreign & Security Policy. Fellowships are selected annually and are open to journalists in any medium.
Global Development Policy Fellows
María Gabriela Cisterna is a freelance journalist with a deep interest in culture, environment and society. Her scope of interest ranges from local regional issues, Northeast of Argentina, to its bonds with Latin America in a wider frame. She collaborates in RED/ACCIÓN, a Solutions Journalism media as a journalist. Moreover, she is certified as a Solutions Journalism Trainer by the Solutions Journalism Network. She is a permanent collaborator for Clarín, Revista Ñ and La Nota Tucumana. She has been writing since an early age and is now dabbing into podcasting and content creation.
She holds a degree in Philosophy awarded by UNT -Universidad Nacional de Tucumán-. She was awarded a scholarship at the Journalism School at Columbia University (NYC) as a result of her performance in the Master of Journalism at Universidad de San Andrés in Argentina. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD in Philosophy at Universidad Buenos Aires.
Daniel Plafker is a multilingual journalist and filmmaker with a focus on ecology, politics and trade. Based in Nairobi, Kenya since 2019, his work has been featured by broadcasters from Berlin to Beijing and Istanbul.
As a newsroom editor and studio presenter, he produced round-the-clock coverage of current affairs for TV audiences. Today, he works as a field reporter, videographer and drone pilot, having covered elections, agriculture, human rights, technology, culture and sport in fourteen countries.
As a 2024 Heinrich Boell Transatlantic Media Fellow, he'll investigate the impact of market-based climate change responses like carbon credit trading schemes on the rights and livelihoods of indigenous communities in East Africa.
Camila Saccomori is a freelance journalist in Brazil with 20 years of experience in print and digital journalism. Her passion is covering early childhood development and related topics like education, health, culture, social justice and the environment. She has worked as a reporter and news editor for local and national media in her country and holds a Master in Social Sciences & Communication.
Currently, Camila is one of the trainers of the first Google News Initiative training network in Brazil, led by Instituto Fala!, a non-profit organization dedicated to cause-oriented journalism. She has been awarded two media fellowships from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma (Columbia University), and another one from National Press Foundation. Her drive is to explore new ways of telling stories in journalism that not only highlight problems, but also point to possible solutions.
Climate and Environmental Policy
Silvie Harder is a scientist and passionate science communicator. She has a PhD from McGill University in Montreal, Canada where she studied the impacts of climate change on Arctic wetlands. She has experience in research, teaching and writing about climate change and ecosystems and has worked with NGOs and different levels of government. Having worked in the climate change realm for many years, she believes that clear communication of scientific information is paramount.
Katie Myers is a writer in the mountain South. Previously, she worked as a climate solutions fellow at Grist, and a reporter at WMMT 88.7 FM, an eastern Kentucky community radio station. Her work has appeared in the BBC, NPR, Belt Magazine, and Scalawag Magazine, among others, as well as onstage in Nashville, New York, and Knoxville. She writes about rural politics, energy transition, climate, and labor. She'll travel to Germany and Poland to study the transition away from coal.
Rebecca Stegmann is a freelance journalist. Based in Germany, she reports, among other things, on climate, the energy transition, environmental justice and the latest fascinating scientific research. She was trained at the German School of Journalism. Her work has been published by ZEIT, stern, Süddeutsche Zeitung and SWR, among others. She is a 2022 International Journalists' Programmes Fellow. She holds a master's degree in global studies with a focus on energy and resource politics from Ghent University and Roskilde University. She will travel to Alaska to report on permafrost and how Alaska's indigenous communities are dealing with its thawing.
Democracy
Lara Islinger is an activist, researcher, and emerging freelance writer focusing on reproductive justice and abortion. For the past 2 years, she has worked closely with feminist organizations and collectives in Mexico and the US as they adapt to the fragmentized landscape of abortion access after the fall of Roe. Her primary focus is on self-managed abortion and feminist grassroots networks providing free, alegal abortion care. Moreover, Lara is working on several projects with the organization Shout Your Abortion aimed at normalizing abortion and elevating safe paths to access, regardless of legality. She is also the care coordinator of Abortion Freedom Fund and involved in the campaign "Abtreibung entkriminalisieren" ("Decriminalize Abortion") in Germany.
At the moment, Lara is a master's candidate at the University of Hamburg, Germany. After spending the fall semester 2023 at UC Berkeley as a Visiting Student Researcher, she is now in the final stretch of writing her thesis on feminist abortion accompaniment. The research project is based on participatory fieldwork with the Mexican feminist organization Las Libres. Lara also holds a BA in political science from University of Hamburg and an interdisciplinary diploma from Smith College. Through public writing, she is looking to make her research more accessible to a wider audience and has recently published pieces in Feminist Studies and Perspective Daily, an online magazine for constructive journalism.
Finbarr Toesland is a multi-award winning journalist committed to illuminating vital human rights stories and underreported issues. He has reported on war crime allegations in Ukraine for The i paper and openDemocracy, travelled to Berlin's first LGBTQ refugee centre for NBC News and investigated Europe's invitation-only conversion therapy conference as part of a cross-border collaborative project.
He has been awarded fellowships from the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity, International Journalists' Programmes (IJP) and the John Schofield Trust. Finbarr also received grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Journalismfund Europe and the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung. He studied at University College London and the University of Cambridge.
Digital Policy
Rebecca Heilweil is a journalist covering emerging technology policy. She currently works at FedScoop, where she reports on topics including artificial intelligence and privacy. She's written for outlets including New York Focus, Recode, MIT Tech Review, Wired, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. In Europe, she'll be reporting on algorithmic accountability and governance -- with an eye toward lessons for US policymakers.
Foreign & Security Policy
Jack Detsch is a Pentagon and national security correspondent at Foreign Policy magazine. In his current role, he has broken numerous stories that lawmakers have drawn on to press the Trump and Biden administrations for accountability on topics such as arms control and Chinese foreign investment. In 2019, while serving as a reporter at Al-Monitor, a global news organization covering the Middle East, Detsch won the exemplary media award from the Forum on the Arms Trade for his coverage of the Trump administration's policy toward Yemen. Detsch came to Washington after covering cybersecurity for the Christian Science Monitor and working at NPR-affiliated radio stations in the San Francisco Bay Area. During the fellowship, he plans to cover European efforts to revive defense industry and policy in light of the renewed military threat from Russia, including the buildup of the NATO battle groups, and Ukraine's civilian effort to provide support to the frontlines.
Marilen Martin studied and worked in China, Italy, Ukraine, the US, and Russia and has a background in International Relations from TU Dresden and Johns Hopkins SAIS. Her experience in journalism started at ZDF, where she worked as an intern in Moscow when Russia launched its full-scale invasion. After continuing to work as a freelance journalist for ZDF, she interned with the European Data Journalism Network in Trento, Italy, where she wrote about Ukraine's green reconstruction. This summer, Marilen will start an internship in journalism at Bloomberg in Frankfurt am Main. In the framework of the Transatlantic Fellowship, she plans to investigate the role of U.S.companies in Ukraine's green reconstruction. Her research will focus on actual and pledged investment flows and evaluating how effectively these are supporting to rebuild Ukraine sustainably, while considering what is required on the ground to ensure a resilient reconstruction.
Sam Skove covers the Army and Marine Corps for Defense One, where he's broken stories on Swiss munitions sales to Ukraine and the Russian military's use of American Starlink satellite devices. He was previously a freelance journalist in Ukraine, where he covered Russian war crimes, Ukrainian partisans, and the Ukrainian military's use of drones for The New Republic, Foreign Policy, and others.
He will be reporting from Poland on increasingly important Polish, EU, and NATO efforts to train Ukrainian troops following two years of Ukrainian battlefield losses and an ongoing discussion of changes to Ukraine's military draft policies.