South Asia Center affiliate Nausheen Husain, whose work examines media coverage of Muslim people and communities and the impact of that coverage, has been selected as the 2023-25 Lender Center for Social Justice Faculty Fellow.  Husain is an assistant professor of magazine, news and digital journalism in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, where she teaches data and documents journalism. Before joining the University in 2021, she did data reporting and wrote for the Chicago Tribune on state surveillance of Muslim Americans, carceral units targeting Muslims, the 2017 “Muslim Ban,” refugee communities and the government’s historical disinvestment in Chicago’s communities of color. She also helped build back-end infrastructure for election reporting and contributed to visual journalism projects.

Husain’s project will examine past and present American “War on Terror”-related government policies and programs, and how these policies were covered in news media. Her work, in collaboration with Nicole Nguyen at UIC in Chicago, will include interviews with young people whose families have been deeply affected by these policies, whether because of targeting, surveillance or incarceration, as well as journalists who worked in newsrooms when these policies were being introduced, and who may have faced barriers in covering these issues.

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