BIO

Jason Motlagh is an Istanbul-based multimedia journalist. He has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Ivory Coast, Haiti and many other countries for leading US and international news media.

Much of his recent work has been supported with grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, spanning India’s Maoist insurgency and the civil war in Sri Lanka to an ongoing project on civilian casualties in Afghanistan. In March, his Virginia Quarterly Review online series on the 2008 Mumbai attacks won the first-ever National Magazine Award for News Reporting.

Motlagh is currently a freelance correspondent for TIME and Frontline/World, filing text stories, photos and video dispatches that he shoots and edits. In 2009, his video reports were nominated for the Society of Publishers in Asia awards for multimedia news. He has also reported and produced documentary features for PBS’ Foreign Exchange and Al Jazeera English.

His articles and photos have been published in TIME, Economist, US News and World Report, New Republic, New Statesman, Washington Post, Washington Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, Globe and Mail, Internazionale, Corriere della Serra, VQR and elsewhere.

Between assignments he is regularly invited to discuss his reporting on TV and radio shows and at top universities around the country. He often speaks to journalism students on the challenges and opportunities of “backpack” news-gathering in the digital age.

Motlagh is a graduate of the University of Virginia and worked as a commercial fisherman in Alaska before entering journalism.