Joanna Kakissis was born in Athens, Greece and grew up in North and South Dakota. She's currently based in Athens and has reported from Europe and the United States as well as Afghanistan and Bangladesh. A frequent contributor to National Public Radio and TIME, she has also reported for The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Financial Times Magazine, PRI/BBC's The World and Marketplace.
Kakissis is researching stories about the Hazara Afghan migrants. The Hazara are Afghanistan's main Shi'ite ethnic group and many of them have been living in limbo for years because of religious persecution. Her research has taken her from the Hazara's homeland in Bamiyan and Kabul, Afghanistan to Athens, Greece, where many Afghans live in squalid refugee communities as they wait in vain for asylum. On a very personal level, this is a story about losing a home and living in limbo while seeking a new one. But it's also a story about how a long-lasting war is forcing a mass global migration of a persecuted ethnic group, and how badly a disintegrating European Union is handling this flood of newcomers.
TIME: AFGHANISTAN'S STRUGGLES WITH MATERNAL MORTALITY
NPR: BIT BY BIT, AFGHANISTAN REBUILDS BUDDHIST STATUES
THE CARAVAN: GREECE - A DARK DAWN
The Knight Luce Fellowship for Reporting in Global Religion is sponsored by the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, USC, and funded by a grant from the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs.
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