



SAJA Student Scholarship 2018 Winners

The South Asian Journalists Association is pleased to announce the following winners for this year’s student scholarship fund. SAJA will be awarding $2,000 to each scholarship winner.





Mohammad Ali, Columbia Journalism School







Mohammad Ali is a staff writer with The Hindu based in New Delhi. He will be attending the MA (Politics & Global Affairs) program at Columbia University, New York in the fall. He has written about communal politics and tracked the growth of Right-wing Hindu nationalism in the hinterlands of North India which preceded and coincided with the rise of Narendra Modi as a Hindutva leader and the Prime Minister of India. He tweets @hindureporter





Anakha Arikara, Columbia Journalism School





Born in California to Indian parents, Anakha Arikara moved to India when she was 13 and was inspired by the diversity and culture she found there. This was the source of her passion for storytelling. She has written for publications such as Food Lovers, and The Better India, and has also been a scriptwriter and director for visual features. Anakha will be attending Columbia University in New York City in the fall, to pursue a Master’s degree in Journalism, with a specialization in Documentary film.

Anika Hazra, the University of Illinois at Chicago

Anika Hazra is an ecologist and science communicator transitioning to a career in science journalism. She has a BSc in Ecology with a minor in English from the University of Toronto and an MS in Ecology and Evolution from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She will be attending New York University in the Fall as an MA student in the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. She has contributed to various online science news publications, written a video for Ted-ED about insect identification and is a guest host for the podcast Science for the People. You can check out her work here .



Ravleen Kaur, UC Berkeley



Ravleen Kaur is a journalist based in Portland, Oregon. Her work has ranged from reporting on education for Portland-area newspapers to documenting testimonies of the 1984 anti-Sikh massacres. This fall, she will begin the Master's program at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where she will focus on narrative writing, visual media, and investigative reporting. She's interested in pursuing stories about immigrant communities and diasporic identity along the intersections of race, remembrance, and resilience. She graduated from Portland State University in 2015 with a B.A. in English. Twitter handle: @Ravleen_K

Salina Nasir, UC Berkeley



Salina Nasir is a freelance journalist based in the Bay Area whose reporting has taken her to India. A rising second-year student at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, she concentrates her studies on narrative writing and new media. Her recent feature piece on Islamic feminism appears in the San Francisco Magazine, and she is currently writing a piece for HuffPost India that tells the story of a Gurgaon-based female bodybuilder. Twitter: @salinanas

Priyanka Runwal, University of California, Santa Cruz



Priyanka Runwal is an ecologist and works on the socio-ecology of arid grassland and savanna landscapes in India. She is also a freelance science journalist for The Wire and IndiaBioscience and reports on subjects related to biodiversity, ecology, conservation and the environment. She will be attending the Science Communication Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz this Fall. With a Masters in Biodiversity Conservation and Management from the University of Oxford and 6 years of research experience, she hopes to take advantage of her academic background to bring science from the field and labs to popular media.



Jaya Sundaresh, City University of New York



Jaya Sundaresh is a journalist who hails from Schenectady, New York; she will be attending CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism in the fall. She has written for various publications, including The Aerogram and The Alt Weekly, an alternative weekly based in the Capital Region of New York. Her reporting interests include mass incarceration and policing. She is excited to join CUNY and pursue her dream of being an investigative reporter.



Priyanka Vora, New York University



Priyanka Vora is an award-winning journalist who specializes in health--especially the interaction of new technology and social values and the problems of health care in rural areas and poor communities. Priyanka started reporting at age 19 and has worked for Hindustan Times,Midday and Free Press Journal. Currently, she is a health writer with Scroll.in. In 2017, she won the International Centre for Journalists award for Early Childhood Development reporting and the Red Ink Award in India for health reporting for her series on an encephalitis outbreak in a conflict-ridden district of Odisha.



Apoorva Joshi, Michigan State University



Apoorva Joshi is a Ph.D. student at Michigan State University. An interdisciplinary and mixed-methods researcher, she studies environmental journalism, risk communication, environmental policy, and conservation criminology. With a degree in environmental science from the University of Pune and an M.A. in environmental journalism from the University of Montana, Apoorva draws from her experiences as a journalist and a scientist to inform her interdisciplinary doctoral research.



Nandini Rathi, New York University



Nandini Rathi is a journalist from India. After having graduated from Whitman College in Film & Media studies and Politics, she has been living in New Delhi area where she was until recently associated with The Indian Express. She will be attending New York University in the fall and pursuing a joint masters in Journalism and International Relations. Among her several reporting interests are social justice, gender and health. She looks forward to grow immensely as a professional in the next two years.







