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Ethics & Justice Investigative 
  Journalism Fellowships

The Schuster Institute’s Ethics & Justice Investigative Journalism Fellowships are awarded to reporters whose ambitious projects are consistent with our journalistic mission: to investigate and report on important public issues of government and corporate accountability, social justice, or human rights.

Through this collaboration with highly qualified and motivated investigative reporters, the Schuster Institute is undertaking additional stories of significant public interest. Our unpaid Fellows are pursuing important projects on a variety of topics, each working to a high standard with intensely researched, carefully fact-checked work that can benefit from having an institutional home.

While these fellowships are unpaid, Ethics & Justice Investigative Journalism Fellows have access to Brandeis University’s databases and other online resources; some student research assistance, where appropriate; some editorial support, guidance, and promotion of the completed work, when needed; and the potential to have the background documents and research related to their work hosted on our website.

Journalists with a compelling project related to our core interests may write to us explaining how their work is related to ours, and how their work and ours would benefit from the affiliation.

New Fellowship Program

The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University and the Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) in Washington, D.C. announced in early January 2012 the launch of the Schuster Institute & Fund for Investigative Journalism Fellowships, an innovative investigative journalism collaboration with reporting on vital social justice and human rights issues as its core mission—reporting now endangered in mainstream newsrooms. Press release>

Schuster Institute
  Senior Fellows

Trevor Aaronson

Trevor Aaronson is co-founder and associate director of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit journalism organization that produces reporting about Florida and Latin America in English and Spanish. He is the author of the "The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism" (Ig Publishing, January 2013), in which he analyzes 500 domestic terror prosecutions. Aaronson was a 2010-11 Investigative Reporting Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. His journalism has been funded by the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Carnegie Legal Reporting Fellowship. A two-time finalist for the Livingston Awards for journalists under the age of 35, Aaronson has won more than two dozen national and regional awards, including the Molly Prize, the international Data Journalism Award, and the John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award. Twitter: @TrevorAaronson

Michael Blanding 

Michael Blanding is an award-winning magazine writer who covers politics, social issues,and travel. His investigative journalism and travel reporting have taken him around the world, writing for publications including The Nation, The New Republic, Salon.com, Consumers Digest, The Boston Globe Magazine, and Boston Magazine. In 2010, Blanding published his first book of investigative non-fiction, "The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World’s Favorite Soft Drink," (Avery/Penguin, 2010). He is a three-time finalist for a Livingston Award, given to journalists under the age of 35. Blanding is under contract with Penguin to write "The Map Thief: How One Man Stole $3 Million in Rare Maps and Re-Charted the Insular World of Map Collecting." Twitter: @MichaelBlanding

Scott Carney 

Scott Carney is an award-winning journalist and author of "The Red Market: On the Trail of theWorld’s Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers and Child Traffickers" (William Morrow, 2011). "The Red Market" received the 2012 Clarion Award in the category of Books & CD-ROMS/DVDs – Nonfiction, Non-Technical Book. Carney focuses on the coverage of illicit global trade of humans and their body parts, surrogacy tourism, child trafficking for adoption, and the international business of fertility. In 2010, he won the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism for his story “Meet the Parents,” which tracked an international kidnapping-to-adoption ring. He is a contributing editor at Wired. His articles appear in publications such as Mother Jones, Foreign Policy, Discover, Outside, and Fast Company. Carney’s appointment is through the Schuster Institute-Fund for Investigative Journalism Fellowship. Twitter: @SGCarney

Karen Coates & Jerry Redfern

Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern report primarily from Southeast Asia, working as a print and photojournalist team on issues involving the environment, health, and human rights. "An Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos," a book they co-reported and wrote,will be published by ThingsAsian Press in the fall of 2012.

During a Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism, Coates focused on food security issues and created a global forum connecting scientists and journalists with farmers, fishers, cooks, and eaters. Her book "Cambodia Now: Life in the Wake of War" (McFarland, 2005) won the August Derleth Nonfiction Book Award. Coates’ stories have appeared in GlobalPost.com, The Wall Street Journal Asia, Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia, and National Geographic Books.

Since 1998, when Redfern and Coates first went to Cambodia, Redfern has provided photos for news, features, and investigative stories for Agence France-Presse, The New York Times, The Cambodia Daily, and other publications. His work has won awards from journalism and art organizations, including the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Center-Review Santa Fe, and the National Press Photographers Association. In 2012, the Society of Environmental Journalists awarded Redfern first place in its Outstanding Photography category for “Flavor of Danger,” a story about the legacy of American bombs from the Vietnam War that he did with Coates and which was published in Gastronomica. He was named a 2012-13 Scripps Fellow at the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Coates and Redfern’s appointments are through the Schuster Institute-Fund for Investigative Journalism Fellowship. Twitter: @ramblingspoon @JerryRedfern

Rebekah Cowell

Rebekah L. Cowell is an investigative journalist specializing in social justice reporting involving environment and health issues. Based in North Carolina, Cowell has collaborated with The Independent Weekly in Durham, N.C. on award-winning investigative projects involving environmental injustices in African-American communities. Her story “The Waste Land” received the Society for Professional Journalists’ 2011 Sigma Delta Chi Award in the category of investigative reporting for a non-daily publication. Cowell’s stories have been published in The News and Observer, GRIT Magazine, Slate.com, among others, and at the Institute for Southern Studies. As an independent journalist, she was awarded a George Polk investigative grant to pursue her reporting. Cowell’s appointment is through the Schuster Institute-Fund for Investigative Journalism Fellowship.

Madeline Drexler 

Madeline Drexler is the editor of the Harvard Public Health Review and an independent journalist and author specializing in public health, medicine, and science. She is the author of "Emerging Epidemics: The Menace of New Infections" (Penguin, 2010), and has published articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, The American Prospect, The New Republic Online, USA Today, The Journal of Life Sciences, Nieman Reports, and Biosecurity and Bioterrorism. Drexler was honored for her investigative article “Why Your Food Isn’t Safe” (Good Housekeeping, Oct. 2011) by the Society for Professional Journalists’ with a Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service in Magazine Journalism (national circulation). This article also garnered Drexler the 2012 Clarion Award for a feature in a magazine with a circulation greater than 500,000. 

Jan Goodwin 

Jan Goodwin is an independent journalist and author who has committed her career to reporting on social justice issues and investigating abuses of human rights—both international and domestic. She has reported on honor killings, child soldiers, the Soviets’ Afghan war, and restorative justice projects, among other topics. Her articles have been published by The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie-Claire, O, the Oprah Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, and Glamour. Goodwin is the author of two books, both of which have been widely translated. "Price of Honor: Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic World," (Little Brown, 1994; Plume paperback, 2002) examines how Islamice xtremism affects the lives of Muslim women. For her book "Caught in the Crossfire" (E.P. Dutton 1987), Goodwin spent three months traveling with the Afghan resistance behind enemy lines during the Soviet-Afghan war. Her work has received many awards, including a 2010 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism for "Broken Promises," (Ladies Home Journal, April 2010) a story about a young woman’s escape from Sierra Leone and the prospect of genital mutilation to the United States, where she landed in prison.

E.J. Graff 

As an author and journalist, E.J. Graff has written widely about such issues as corruption in international adoption, discrimination, violence against women and children, marriage and family, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender civil rights issues. As a columnist for The American Prospect, she posts several times a week on the magazine’s website. "The Lie We Love," her Schuster Institute collaborative investigation with Foreign Policy about corrupt practices in international adoption, won the 2008 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism and the Society for Professional Journalism’s Sigma Delta Chi Award for Magazine InvestigativeReporting. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Columbia Journalism Review, Democracy Journal, Foreign Policy, and The Los Angeles Times. Graff served as the Schuster Institute’s associate director until May 2011, after coming aboard as a senior researcher in December 2005. She is the author of "What Is Marriage For?" (Beacon Press, 2004) and coauthor with former Lt. Governor of Massachusetts Evelyn Murphy of "Getting Even: Why Women Still Don't Make As Much As Men—And What To Do So We Will" (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 2005). Twitter @ejgraff

Kalpana Jain 

Kalpana Jain is known in her home country of India as a pioneering reporter on public health and healthcare issues. Before becoming an independent journalist, Jain spent 18 years at The Times of India as a reporter and editor, where she covered controversial and taboo topics such as female feticide and the resulting unbalanced sex ratio of boys and girls, ethics in the medical industry, and corruption involving pharmaceutical companies and doctors. Her book "Positive Lives: The Story of Ashok and Others with HIV" (Penguin Global, 2003) focused India’s attention on the struggles and issues of people there who were living with HIV/AIDS. Jain is developing a reporting project at the Schuster Institute to draw global attention to the dire circumstances and prospects many girls and women in India confront. She is writing a case study for Harvard Kennedy School on debt bondage in India. She worked as a teaching fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, where she received her Master’s in Public Administration in 2011. She blogs for MIT’s Open Documentary Lab.

Brooke Kroeger 

Brooke Kroeger is a journalist, author of four books, and professor of journalism at the New York University (NYU) Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, where she directs its graduate Global and Joint Program Studies. Her recent book, "Undercover Reporting: The Truth About Deception," (2012) mines the historical record to argue in favor of this often-maligned practice and has an extensive companion online database that goes back to the 1830s. Her previous books are the 1994 "Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist"; a second biography, "Fannie: The Talent for Success of Writer Fannie Hurst," published in 1999; and "Passing: When People Can’t Be Who They Are," published in 2003. Before becoming a freelance journalist, she served as UN Correspondent for Newsday and as a deputy metropolitan editor for New York Newsday. For United Press International in its Scripps Howard days, she had postings in Chicago, Brussels, London and Tel Aviv, where she was bureau chief for three years before returning to London to serve as the agency’s chief editor for its Europe, the Middle East and Africa division. At NYU, she served two terms, from 2005 to 2011, as chair and director of NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism. Twitter: @BrookeKroeger

Jennifer Margulis 

Jennifer Margulis investigates overlooked dangers of some mainstream child-rearing practices in which scientific evidence has been brushed aside in favor of those championed by special interests. In April 2013, Scribner will publish her book "The Business of Baby: What Doctors Don’t Tell You, What Corporations Try to Sell You, and How to Put Your Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Before Their Bottom Lines." She has written or edited three books about parenting. "Toddler: Real-Life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love" (Seal Press, 2003), a collection of first person accounts that she edited, won the Independent Publishers Book Association Award for best parenting book. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, More, and Parents. Her Smithsonian Magazine cover story about giraffes in Niger was selected to appear in the book "Best American Science Writing 2009." Her appointment is through the Schuster Institute-Fund for Investigative Journalism Fellowship. Twitter: @JenniferMarguli

Phillip Martin

Phillip Martin is a senior investigative reporter for WGBH Boston Public Radio, a regular panelist for WGBH’s Basic Black, and host of PBS World TV Channel’s Your Vote 2012. He has reported on human trafficking in southern New England, carbon offset schemes, police training and race, the Occupy movement, and the impact of federal regulations on the fishing industry in New England, among other topics. Martin is an adjunct professor at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University and executive producer for Lifted Veils Productions, a nonprofit public radio journalism company dedicated to exploring issues that divide society. In 1995, in his role as a senior producer, Martin helped create The World on PRI/BBC. As a Ford Foundation Fellow with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) in Washington D.C., he is working on a series of reports about centers of human trafficking in Southeast Asia from which people are brought to cities on the East Coast of the United States. Twitter: @phillipWBGH

Maryn McKenna

Maryn McKenna is an independent journalist and author specializing in infectious diseases, public health, global health, and food policy. She is a columnist and contributing editor for Scientific American, blogs for Wired, and writes frequently for national and international magazines including SELF, Nature, The Guardian, and More. Her work has appeared in China Newsweek, MSNBC.com, CNBC.com, and the Los Angeles Times. She is a regular contributor to the Annals of Emergency Medicine. In her book "Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA" (FreePress/Simon & Schuster 2010), McKenna writes about the international epidemic of drug resistant staph. While researching her book, "Beating Back the Devil: On the Front Lines with the Disease Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service" (Free Press/Simon & Schuster2004), she was embedded within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Epidemic Intelligence Service corps for a year to look at how the CDC tracks outbreaks of disease and tries to prevent their spread. Twitter: @MarynMck

Tracie McMillan 

Tracie McMillan is an investigative journalist whose reporting spotlights topics of economic injustice. She is the author of the New York Times Bestseller "The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table," in which she went undercover to report on the food production and distribution systems in America. McMillan is the recipient of such prestigious journalism awards as the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, which she received in 2006 for her three-part series “Getting By” which was published in City Limits where she was managing editor. In 2005, McMillan won a Harry Chapin Media Award for “The Action Diet,” also published in City Limits. Her articles appear in a wide range of publications including The New York Times, Harper’s, Slate.com, Saveur, Salon.com, and Gastronomica. In 2013, she was named a Knight-Wallace Fellow in residence at the University of Michigan. McMillan’s appointment as a Senior Fellow is through a collaboration between the Schuster Institute and the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Twitter: @TMMcMillan

Erin Siegal 

Erin Siegal is an independent investigative journalist and photojournalist. In 2012, she published "Finding Fernanda: Two Mothers, One Child, and a Cross-Border Search for the Truth" (Beacon Press, 2012), an investigative reporting project that uncovers child trafficking, corruption, and fraudulent practices in the international adoption system between Guatemala and the United States. Following this, she published "The U.S. Embassy Cables: Adoption Fraud in Guatemala, 1987-2010" (Cathexis Press, 2012), a 718-page volume of diplomatic cables she compiled from her Freedom of Information Act requests. For her book "Finding Fernanda," Siegal received the 2012 Robert Spiers Benjamin Award Citation for best reporting in any medium on Latin America from the Overseas Press Club of America, the 2012 International Latino Book Award in the Women's Issues category, and a James Madison Award for work that champions the First Amendment. In 2012, she was named a Soros Justice Fellow by the Open Society Foundation to report on deportation of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Twitter: @ErinSiegal

Maria Stenzel

Maria Stenzel is a freelance photojournalist who has covered environmental issues, natural history, science, indigenous cultures, and history for National Geographic Magazine since 1991. Among her 25 stories for National Geographic she has photographed the pollination system of migratory beekeepers in the United States; the challenges facing native cultures in Siberia, Tibet, Borneo, Kenya, Bolivia and Mexico; illegal logging in the Peruvian Amazon; Patagonia’s ice fields and fjords; the route followed by explorer David Thompson; and the world of poet Walt Whitman. Since 1995, Stenzel has regularly documented scientists at work in Antarctica, photographing their studies of sea ice in the Southern Ocean; glacial melt of ice shelves in West Antarctica; wildlife studies from krill to humpback whales; and the geologic history of the Dry Valleys in the Antarctica. Her coverage of chinstrap penguins breeding on the remote South Sandwich Islands of the Scotia Sea won awards from World Press Photo, the National Magazine Awards, the National Press Photographers Association, Wildlife Photographer of the Year, and Communication Arts. In 2011 she was a Global Vision finalist at Pictures of the Year International for her coverage of climate change in West Antarctica. As a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT in 2012, she spent the year learning documentary filmmaking.

James Verini

James Verini has been an East Africa correspondent for Foreign Policy since November. He's reported from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Sudan. He has contributed to National Geographic, the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, New York Magazine, Washington Monthly, newyorker.com, Slate, and others. Until 2009, he was a contributing editor at the Conde Nast Portfolio magazine, where he was twice nominated for a National Magazine Award in the reporting category. Before that, he was a features contributor and columnist at The Los Angeles Times covering culture and the arts, and before that a staff writer at the New York Observer, covering business. In addition to Africa, his reporting has taken him to the Middle East, Russia, East Asia, India, and Latin America. Twitter: @JamesVerini

Hella Winston

Hella Winston is an independent journalist whose work involves on-going investigative reporting for The New York Jewish Week. Her extensive series of investigative reporting has drawn public attention to a “parallel justice system” involving the cover up of child sexual abuse in some fervently Orthodox Jewish communities, and raised questions about how these cases are being handled by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office. The American Jewish Press Association awarded Winston with first place in the category of Excellence in News Reporting for her article “In Lakewood Abuse Cases: A Parallel System of Justice,” and second place for “Tragedy in Borough Park Puts Shomrim Under Scrutiny.” The Journalism Center on Children and Families gave Winston 2012 Casey Medal honorable mention for the entire series of articles broadly titled “Child Sexual Abuse in theUltra-Orthodox Community.” She is the author of the book "Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels (Beacon Press, 2005). Winston’s appointment is through the Schuster Institute-Fund forInvestigative Journalism Fellowship.