Monday, December 14, 2009

Huma Yusuf

Huma Yusuf is the Features Editor of Dawn.com, the website of Pakistan’s leading English-language daily Dawn. She also contributes articles on a freelance papers to papers in the US and India, including The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, and Indian Express. A graduate of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program (MSc), Huma is interested in the social impact of media trends. She has written extensively about new media and democracy in Pakistan and is currently researching the role of community radio stations in Pakistan’s northern and tribal areas. She is also currently launching a first-of-its-kind webzine, the goal of which is to provide an alternate forum where journalists and academics can publish articles on Pakistani society and culture that lie at the intersection of reportage and scholarly research.

Previously, Huma graduated from Harvard in 2002 with a degree in English and American Literatures and Languages, and returned to Pakistan to work as a journalist with the monthly Herald magazine. She specializes in human rights reporting and has addressed subjects such as low-income housing, ‘honour’ killings, gang wars and the state’s ineffective prosecution of rape cases. Her writing garnered the UNESCO/Pakistan Press Foundation ‘Gender in Journalism 2005′ Award and the European Commission’s 2006 Natali Lorenzo Prize for Human Rights Journalism. Huma is also interested in investigating trends in media consumption, online environments, and the interface between media, local politics and global trends - an intersection that she explores through her research and journalism.