CAMBRIDGE, MA— The MIT Center for International Studies announced today that Sally Sara, anchor and senior reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), has received the Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship. Sara is the third recipient of the annual fellowship, which gives a woman journalist working in print, broadcast, or online media the opportunity to focus exclusively on human rights journalism.

Sara will join the Center in September for a nine-month research fellowship where she will have access to a broad range of courses, seminars, and events. She will also have opportunities to work at the Boston Globe and the New York Times.

"We are thrilled to welcome Sally Sara,” said Richard Samuels, director of the Center for International Studies and Ford International Professor of Political Science. “She brings a wealth of experience and knowledge of world politics—from the street level to our MIT seminar rooms."

Sara has worked for ABC since 1993, reporting from Africa as a foreign correspondent from 2000-2005. She is also an author and took leave from her reporting job in 2005 to write a book on African women. Called GoGo Mama, the book will be published in July.

Poverty, war, political unrest, ethnic violence and violence against women are topics that interest Sara. Among the stories she has reported on are human rights abuses in Darfur and Zimbabwe, child soldiers in Liberia, AIDS orphans in Lesotho and mutilation of women in Uganda.

“I have a deep commitment to tell the stories of those who have endured human rights abuses, particularly women,” she wrote in her fellowship application.

Sara was the recipient of the British Prize for Journalism in 1999, and in 2003 was a finalist for the Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism for radio coverage of genocide survivors in Rwanda. She received her Bachelor of Arts in communication from the University of South Australia.

The Elizabeth Neuffer fellowship is a project of the International Women's Media Foundation (Washington, D.C.), which also supports the Elizabeth Neuffer Forum on Human Rights and Journalism.  The fellowship is named for Elizabeth Neuffer, a Boston Globe reporter and the winner of a 1998 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award who was killed while on assignment in Iraq in 2003. Neuffer’s life mission was to promote international understanding of human rights and social justice.

For more information about the Elizabeth Neuffer fellowship, go to: https://www.iwmf.org/programs/the-elizabeth-neuffer-fellowship/