WITNESS Media Lab Announces Our First Google News Lab Fellow

WITNESS is pleased to announce international affairs student and data visualizer Niko Efstathiou as the inaugural Google News Lab Fellow with the WITNESS Media Lab.

The Google News Lab Fellowship is a 10-week fellowship program designed for students interested in the intersection of media and technology. Successful applicants join a three-day workshop at Google’s campus in Mountain View, CA where they receive training on a number of digital tools before they join their partner institutions.

Niko holds a B.A. in Political Science from Yale and is currently a second-year student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, where he is specializing in International Media, Advocacy and Technology. Prior to his Google News Lab Fellowship with WITNESS, he has served as Director of Communications for the NO Project, an award-winning, global educational campaign that targets youth awareness of human trafficking and modern-day slavery, as well as Visual Media Director for NaTakallam, an online platform which pairs displaced Syrians with Arabic learners around the world for language practice. Niko has also worked as a parliamentary advisor intern for the European Parliament, as well as a reporting intern for the Foreign Affairs desk of Kathimerini, Greece’s most circulated newspaper.

Using his experience in digital mapping and data visualization, Niko will be assisting the WITNESS Media Lab in a number of projects, such as the creation of an interactive platform of eyewitness videos documenting human rights abuses in Western Sahara, as well as an overview of existing practices and digital tools for collaborative Human Rights research and documentation projects.

The WITNESS Media Lab is dedicated to advancing the role of eyewitness video in human rights documentation and advocacy through innovative video curation as well as resource development and thought leadership.