Pakistani journalist Maham Javaid is the Center’s 2022 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow

Pakistani journalist Maham Javaid is the Center’s 2022 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow

Javaid will conduct research at MIT and report for the Boston Globe and New York Times

Maham Javaid
January 31, 2022

Pakistani journalist Maham Javaid will be joining the Center for International Studies (CIS) as its 2022 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow. The fellowship is awarded annually by The International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) and provides its recipient with educational, training and coverage opportunities related to their reporting on global injustice. 

Javaid will operate as a research associate at CIS in addition to completing journalism stays at The Boston Globe and The New York Times. Her fellowship will be spent highlighting stories similar to her previous reporting on the impending HIV crisis in Pakistan in 2017 and the ‘forced’ religious conversion of young Hindu women.

CIS helped establish the IWMF Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship to advance women journalists working in the field of human rights and justice. The fellowship honors Elizabeth Neuffer, a Boston Globe reporter who died in an automobile accident in 2003 while on assignment in Iraq.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Maham to our research community. Her brave reportage on social justice issues follows in the footsteps of Elizabeth, who worked courageously to bring injustices to light. It is an honor to have Maham among us at MIT,” said Richard Samuels, director of CIS and Ford International Professor of Political Science.

Before accepting the Neuffer Fellowship, Javaid worked for Human Rights Watch focusing on focusing on labor abuses of migrant workers in Qatar ahead of the 2022 Fifa World Cup. As the desk editor for the Karachi-based Herald, Javaid won a national award for her reporting. She also reported on-staff for The News on Sunday in Lahore and has written for The NationForeign PolicyDAWN, Al Jazeera English, The DiplomatNaya Daur and other publications. Javaid was nominated twice for the Thomson Foundation Young Journalist Award, and in 2019, she launched the digital media website Soch Writing. Javaid also writes fiction and was awarded the 2019 ZHR Writing Prize for Women and was shortlisted for the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She received her masters from New York University.

“I am excited, honored and humbled to be selected as the IWMF’s 2022 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow,” said Javaid. “I’m going to spend the duration of this fellowship taking forward Elizabeth’s legacy by doing brave and honest reporting, learning how editors will maintain readers’ trust as the pandemic unfolds and submerging myself in the vast academic and practical knowledge that these organizations have to offer.”

More information about the Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship and other programs can be found on the IWMF website.

About the International Women’s Media Foundation

Founded in 1990, the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) is the only global non-profit organization that offers emergency support, safety training, reporting opportunities and funding avenues offered specifically for women-identifying journalists. We are making more women’s bylines possible and work tirelessly to ensure a greater diversity of voices represented in the news industry worldwide.

ABOUT THE CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
The Center for International Studies (CIS) supports interna­tional research and education at MIT. It is the home of MIT’s Security Studies Program; the MIT International Science & Technology Initiative, its pioneering global education program; the Program on Emerging Technologies; and seminars and research on migration, South Asia politics, the Middle East, cybersecurity, nuclear weapons, and East Asia. The Center has traditionally been aligned with the social sciences while also working with MIT’s premier science and engineering scholars. CIS produces research that creatively addresses global issues while helping to educate the next generation of global citizens.