International Visiting Scholars Program
The International Visiting Scholars' Program is a non-degree program and provides an opportunity for mid-career reporters from abroad to pursue advanced professional training and academic study. Visiting Scholars audit courses offered at the journalism school and in other disciplines, drawing upon the extensive resources and community life of a major research university.
We are currently updating the application for the 2010-2011 school year. Interested applicants should come back to visit the page by November 15 for more information on how to apply. In the meantime, contact the Visiting Scholar admissions coordinator with questions at jvsadmit AT berkeley DOT edu.
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2009-2010 Visiting Scholars
Ayla Albayrak is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul, Turkey. For the last five years, she has been a correspondent for the main daily newspaper of Finland, Helsingin Sanomat, covering Turkey and nearby areas. She also freelances for magazines and recently wrote a city guidebook of Istanbul. Ayla started working as a journalist in 2000 as an intern at the Associated Press in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. Ayla was awarded a one-year fellowship by Helsingin Sanomat Foundation in Finland. She is half-Finnish and half-Turkish and plans to return to Istanbul after her studies.
Gerald Businge is a journalist, researcher and entrepreneur from Uganda. He is a widely published journalist with extensive reporting experience in gender, health, people, governance, business and development issues. Businge started reporting for radio in 2000 while at Journalism school, before joing Uganda’s leading newspaper, New Vision as a features writer. In 2003, he started working with Ultimate Media Consult (U) Ltd, where he is a founding director. The company supplies daily news and feature stories to media houses in Uganda and internationally for both broadcast, print and online. He is a Gates fellow with the Journalism School's Africa Reporting Project.
Luc Ihaddadene is a Paris-based journalist. A graduate from l'Institut Français de Presse (French Press Institute) and la Sorbonne, he has contributed as an intern and as a freelance writer to several leading newspapers and magazines in France, including Le Monde, La Croix and Le Nouvel Observateur. He has also been working for quality magazines for teenagers such as Okapi, and recently completed a book aimed at youth about sustainable consumption (to be published at Bayard Jeunesse Publishing, Paris).
Jiang (Annie) Mingzhuo, is a Chinese journalist. Before coming to Berkeley, she worked in Beijing as a senior journalist for China Life magazine. She holds a Master's degree in Chinese literature from Jilin University. Jiang Mingzhuo worked as a news reporter for 21st Century Business Herald, one of the prestigious business newspaper in the country for three years before moving to China Newsweek as an investigative reporter. After two years, she joined China Life magazine as a senior journalist.
Yeong Seon Kim is a TV producer from Korea. She has worked for twelve years at KBS-the biggest public network in Korea. She has been a field reporter and producer for more than four years for the predominant investigative documentary television series, “In-Depth 60 minutes.” She hosted the show for 6 month before she came to Berkeley. She also hosted a well known interview show in Korea from 2007-2008, in which she interviewed about 200 people who, in some way, affect Korean culture, politics, and humanitarian issues.
Deepa Krishnan is a Mumbai-based financial reporter. In the last five years, as a journalist, she has specialized in covering India's nascent commodity futures markets and commodity trading. She began as a reporter in Business Standard, an english-language financial paper, and moved to The Economic Times, India's largest financial daily in 2006. In the last six months, she worked as a television reporter for the newspaper's newly launched TV channel, ET Now. She has a bachelor's degree in Economics, and has a post-graduate diploma in Journalism, with a specialization in television, from Asian College of Journalism.
Aude Lorriaux is a French journalist. Before coming to Berkeley, she contributed as an intern to Le Monde, one of France's most popular daily newspapers, to the AFP (the worldwide French Press Agency), and to La Croix, a national Roman Catholic daily newspaper owned by Bayard Presse. She also worked as a field reporter for L'Est Républicain, a daily regional French newspaper founded in 1889. Lorriaux holds a Master's degree in Political Science and graduated from the French Press Institute in 2009.
Win Kyaw Oo Bio coming soon
Alexandra Prokopenko is a Moscow-based correspondent for ITAR-TASS News Agency, where she has worked since 2007. She mainly covers the activities of government authorities and security issues within the country and abroad. Before working for ITAR-TASS she worked for another Russian news wire, RIA Novosti from 2003 to 2007. She started reporting as an intern in New-Delhi for RIA Novosti's India bureau, and in 2008 from London for ITAR-TASS. She graduated in 2006 from Moscow State University's Journalism department.
Andrea Valencia studied translation and interpretation in Mexico City, where she grew up and was raised. Since 2007, she has been working as a freelance translator and simultaneous interpreter. Her main focus is avant-garde artistic terminology and is specialized in performance art, conceptual art, environments and installations that are in the process of being documented and translated to a major audience. Since 2008, she became interested in journalistic terminology and started working on the Spanish edition for Mission Loc@l, a project of hyper local news website from the Graduate School of Journalism.
Stefano Valentino has been working as a freelancer since 2001 after working as a staff reporter at the Brussels-based newswire Europolitcs. Over the last ten years, he has covered European affairs extensively (il Giornale, Italia Oggi, Lombard Finanza). Since 2005, Brussels has become his strategic hub for worldwide field reporting. He has reported from around 30 countries for the major Italian newspapers and magazines (il Sole 24 Ore, il Messaggero, il Venerdi, Panorama, Famiglia cristiana). In January 2008 he launched his own EU online customized news service www.euroreporter.eu. That same year he also founded the non-profit association Reporters for an Interactive, Cooperative and Specialized Information (RICSI), which is currently developing a global news marketing platform for freelancers, www.freereporter.info.
Wang Qin is a Chinese journalist based in Beijing. During her nine-year career in journalism, she has worked as writer or editor for some of China's most prestigious newspapers and magazine, including The Southern Metropolis Daily, The Beijing News, and Caijing Magazine. She covers mostly legal and investigative topics. She is a graduate of Nanjing University and Peking University. She is a Ph.D candidate in the Journalism and Communication School at Renmin University of China. Wang Qin is deeply interested in new media and media law.
Samean Yun has been working for a national English newspaper, the Cambodia Daily, based in Cambodia for eight years. He first stated as a crime reporter, then became a political reporter, and was promoted to be the newspaper’s assignment editor and political writer before coming to Berkeley. Following the establishment of the Khmer Rouge genocidal tribunal in 2001, Samean traveled to former Khmer Rouge stronghold provinces to interview former Khmer Rouge leaders. Samean received a degree in journalism from the Royal University of Phnom Penh in 2002. In 2005, he spent six months working with Rocky Mountain News as an Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships’ fellow.
If you would like to contact any of the Visiting Scholars, please write to us at jvsadmit AT berkeley.
See bios of previous visiting scholars
If you are a past or current visiting scholar and you have photographs or updates to share, please email anytime. Make sure to include caption information -- the year, occasion, and participants.Visiting Scholar Photo Slideshow