Kim Wall laid out a vision for her career in 2011 in a newspaper in Sweden.

“I want to know how the world works,” she wrote, “and I hope that I maybe one day can learn enough to make a difference.”

But the words she wrote were usually not about herself. Instead, Ms. Wall, a 30-year-old freelance journalist from Sweden, chronicled the lives of others. Among them: a plus-sized pole dancer from Long Island, Chinese feminists who descended upon the Women’s March in Washington, and a Sri Lankan politician who called herself a colonel.

Ms. Wall’s short but prolific career was the focus of an hourlong memorial service on Wednesday night at Columbia University, where she earned two master’s degrees and established herself as a creative and dogged reporter before her violent death in August while reporting a story.

Ms. Wall, whose work spanned continents and included bylines in The New York Times, Harper’s and The Atlantic, disappeared the night of Aug. 10 in the waters near Copenhagen while aboard a submarine built by Peter Madsen, a Danish inventor about whom she had planned to write an article. Her torso was found on Aug. 21. On Oct. 6, divers found her head, legs and clothing. An autopsy found she had been stabbed repeatedly.