CAMBRIDGE, MA—The MIT Center for International Studies (CIS) announced today that Catherine Elton, a freelance journalist from the United States who has been based in Guatemala, will become the Center's first resident Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow. The announcement was made at the first Elizabeth Neuffer Forum, which was held on May 10 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.

CIS Director Richard J. Samuels said, "I look forward to Ms. Elton's participation in the intellectual life of the CIS, and am delighted that we can remember Elizabeth Neuffer in such a fitting way."

The Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship is administered by the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) in Washington, D.C., an organization that aims to strengthen the role of women in the news media worldwide. The Nueffer Fellwship offers a woman journalist working in print, broadcast or online media the opportunity to focus exclusively on human rights journalism and social justice issues.

Beginning in the fall of 2005, Ms. Elton will spend her nine-month fellowship pursuing research opportunities and participating in CIS events and programs-including those at the MIT Program on Human Rights and Justice (PHRJ). During her fellowship year, she will also have access to the Boston Globe and the New York Times.

The fellowship is named for Elizabeth Neuffer, a Boston Globe reporter who was killed while on assignment in Iraq in 2003. Ms. Neuffer's life mission was to promote international understanding of human rights and social justice.

Catherine Elton has been a freelance reporter in Latin America for seven years, the last four of them based in Guatemala. From 1997 to 2000, she was based in Lima , Peru . She reports on human rights, labor issues, trade and migration, among other subjects. Ms. Elton's work regularly appears in the Miami Herald and Houston Chronicleand has also appeared in Time, the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor andWashington Post. Her reports from the region have aired on National Public Radio, CBS News, Radio Pacifica and Voice of America.

The Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship is a project of the Elizabeth Neuffer IWMF Fund, which also supports the Elizabeth Neuffer Forum on Human Rights and Journalism. The Elizabeth Neuffer Fund is generously supported by Peter Canellos, Mark Neuffer, Carolyn Lee, the Boston Globe, the Correspondents Fund, the United Nations Foundation and numerous friends of Elizabeth Neuffer-as well as the MIT Center for International Studies. The Elizabeth Neuffer Forum was presented with the support ofThe Boston Globe and was co-sponsored by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.

For further information, visit the programs section of the IWMF website, https://www.iwmf.org/programs/the-elizabeth-neuffer-fellowship/, or e-mail neuffer@iwmf.org.

For Catherine Elton's biography, go to http://iwmf.org/press/bios.php.