Joanna Kakissis
Joanna Kakissis is a foreign correspondent based in Kyiv, Ukraine, where she reports poignant stories of a conflict that has upended millions of lives, affected global energy and food supplies and pitted NATO against Russia.
Kakissis began reporting in Ukraine shortly before Russia invaded in February. She covered the exodus of refugees to Poland and has returned to Ukraine several times to chronicle the war. She has focused on the human costs, profiling the displaced, the families of prisoners of war and a ninety-year-old "mermaid" who swims in a mine-filled sea. Kakissis highlighted the tragedy for both sides with a story about the body of a Russian soldier abandoned in a hamlet he helped destroy, and she shed light on the potential for nuclear disaster with a report on the shelling of Nikopol by Russians occupying a nearby power plant.
Kakissis began reporting regularly for NPR from her base in Athens, Greece, in 2011. Her work has largely focused on the forces straining European unity — migration, nationalism and the rise of illiberalism in Hungary. She led coverage of the eurozone debt crisis and the mass migration of Syrian refugees to Europe. She's reported extensively in central and eastern Europe and has also filled in at NPR bureaus in Berlin, Istanbul, Jerusalem, London and Paris. She's a contributor to This American Life and has written for The New York Times, TIME, The New Yorker online and The Financial Times Magazine, among others. In 2021, she taught a journalism seminar as a visiting professor at Princeton University.
Kakissis was born in Greece, grew up in North and South Dakota and spent her early years in journalism at The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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Four million Syrian refugees are living in Turkey, and another million displaced Syrians are trapped between Russian-backed Syrian forces and the Turkish border. Turkey says to head for Europe. -
Unlike the anti-immigration, isolationist nationalist parties splintering the European Union, the Scottish National Party promotes a a "big tent" brand of nationalism.
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The HBO series ended in 2019, but superfans still flock to the spots where their favorite scenes were filmed. According to one screen tourism expert, that's helped Northern Ireland reinvent itself. -
The town of Stroud has long been an incubator for activism. Last year, it gave rise to the group Extinction Rebellion, which has rallied thousands globally to demand action on climate change. -
Despite a cash-for-contracts scandal that brought down his government in May, Kurz, 33, the country's youngest-ever chancellor, is likely to win back his job on Sunday in a snap election. -
"Domestic violence never happens because there's a problem with the woman. The men are killing. They are the problem," says a rights activist in Istanbul. -
The hit comedy follows teenagers in a Catholic school in the 1990s. Even with The Troubles as the backdrop, it's "put Northern Ireland on the map for all the right reasons," says one Derry Girls fan. -
The lack of a border has contributed to a booming dairy business between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland – the types of dealings experts say helped make peace between the two a reality. -
Boris Johnson has become Britain's prime minister. But opponents protested against his premiership, and he inherits a deeply divided country that either loves or loathes him.
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The ruling Conservative Party will choose a new leader this week. The winner will inherit a full-blown international crisis, which erupted Friday after Iran seized a British-flagged oil tanker.
