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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Europe's largest refugee camp, on the Greek island of Lesbos, was built to hold 3,000 people. When fires struck this week, the settlement of 12,000 was largely destroyed. -
It is still not clear what caused the fire at at a camp housing migrants and refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos, leaving thousands in need of new shelter.
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No cause has been announced but one government minister seemed to blame refugees worried about COVID-19. Some people displaced from the camp deny they would endanger themselves and their families. -
The camp on the island of Lesbos was under lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic. More than 12,000 migrants are in need of emergency shelter.
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Maartje Duin and Peggy Bouva are examining painful issues in the Netherlands' colonial past. "We wanted to show people that you can talk about this openly, even if it's uncomfortable," says Bouva. -
A tiny Greek island, just off the coast of Turkey, finds itself at the center of a confrontation between the two countries over gas drilling rights in the eastern Mediterranean.
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As parents, teachers and children across the globe struggle with how to return to school safely during the pandemic, we look at strategies in Mexico, South Korea and Greece.
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A popular podcast in the Netherlands is showing the Dutch how to face their country's colonial and slave-trading past as lawmakers push for a national apology and reparations.
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Couples discuss how travel restrictions have kept them oceans apart for months. While they lobby governments to allow them to see each other, some have had to delay weddings or even miss a childbirth. -
A couple forced into a long-distance marriage because of a Trump administration travel ban on Muslim countries haven't seen each other in more than five months because of pandemic travel restrictions.