Alicia Chen, a Taiwanese journalist and filmmaker, will be joining the Center for International Studies (CIS) as the 2025 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow. She arrives at MIT on February 3, 2025, and will be in residence at CIS for the spring semester. 

The fellowship is awarded annually by The International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) and is sponsored in part by CIS. The fellowship provides female and non-binary journalists working in the field of human rights and social justice the opportunity to pursue academic research at MIT and hone their reporting skills. 

“I am so honored to be the IWMF’s 2025 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow and have this incredible opportunity to strengthen my reporting on the complex dynamics surrounding human rights issues at home and abroad,” said Chen. “Taiwan stands as a beacon of press freedom among looming threats of authoritarianism in our region. I hope to use the skills I gain from this fellowship to explore the lives and resistance of people whose rights are violated by these regimes.”

Throughout her seven-year career in journalism, Chen has worked for and been featured in publications around the globe. Her coverage of reproductive rights, labor violations, the COVID-19 pandemic and political repression in Taiwan and China has been featured in outlets including The Washington Post, Al Jazeera English, and The Guardian, among others. 

Previously, Chen worked as a news researcher for The Washington Post’s China bureau. She has also reported for Chinese-language media outlets including The Reporter and Initium Media, where she covered stories including psychological support for war survivors in Ukraine and Chinese immigrants crossing the Darien Gap. 

In 2020, she participated in a cross-border reporting project on global fishing crimes, which won two Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) awards for Environmental and Investigative Reporting.

Chen will use the fellowship to conduct research and take classes related to her reportage while also reporting for The Boston Globe and The New York Times. 

“We are honored to welcome Alica Chen to CIS. Our two-decade partnership with the IWMF has been a rewarding opportunity for our community to engage with journalists from around the world who are committed to shedding light on social injustices and human rights issues that too often go unreported or are repressed by political regimes. We hope Alica finds her time at MIT to be fruitful and look forward to her arrival,” said Evan Lieberman, director of CIS and the Total Professor of Political Science and Contemporary Africa.

The fellowship was established by the IWMF in honor of Elizabeth Neuffer, a Boston Globe reporter who was killed in 2003 while reporting in Iraq. Chen is the 20th annual recipient of this hallmark fellowship and was selected from more than 110 applicants across 50 countries by this year’s committee.