Monaghan wins grant for overseas reporting course
Professor of Practice Elaine Monaghan has received a $12,000 grant from the IU Women’s Philanthropy Leadership Council and the IU Foundation to support a reporting course next spring to Northern Ireland and Ireland.
The grant will help cover costs for students who will take the course from The Media School, the School of Global and International Studies and the Department of Religious Studies. Professor Winni Sullivan, chair of religious studies, will travel with Monaghan and guest lecture on the course, which is also benefiting from collaboration with SGIS colleagues and is part of a collaborative grant project.
The conflict and reconciliation in Northern Ireland will serve as a backdrop for the students’ work, which will focus on journalism skills and representations of religion in journalism.
The course will run throughout the spring semester, with the trip taking place during spring break. It is the first time students from other departments will travel with journalism undergraduates on one of the media school’s travel courses.
Working in cross-disciplinary teams, the students will visit media outlets and other sites in Belfast, Dublin and elsewhere on the divided island, also meeting local officials, nonprofit workers, religious leaders and setting up their own reporting opportunities.
“I can’t wait to see these students teach and learn from each other, engage in deep research and real journalism, and fall in love with the Emerald Isle,” said Monaghan, who ran Reuters’ coverage of the Northern Ireland peace process and Ireland’s entry to European monetary union when she was the international news agency’s chief correspondent in Dublin from 1997-1999.
“Collaboration is key to journalism’s future. These generous grants demonstrate that IU has its priorities straight.”
This is the third grant Monaghan has won to help support the course. She received a $3,000 award from IU’s Office of Overseas Study to travel in preparation for the course, and a $60,000 grant in 2016 from the Luce/American Council of Learned Societies Program in Religion, Journalism and International Affairs, one third of which is dedicated to the course.
The IU Women’s Philanthropy Leadership Council was established under First Lady Laurie Burns McRobbie. It awards more than $100,000 grants annually to programs and initiatives across the IU system.
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