D'Ambrosio

Mary
D'Ambrosio

Assistant Professor of Professional Practice, Journalism and Media Studies

Faculty

OFFICE:
CI 105
PHONE:
848-932-7544
FAX:
732-932-6916
EMAIL:
mary.dambrosio@rutgers.edu
OFFICE HOURS:
WEB LINKS:
Personal Website
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Mary D’Ambrosio is a journalist who specializes in writing about international affairs. She has reported extensively from Europe and Latin America, and her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, Anthropology Now, Institutional Investor, Islands, and Working Woman magazines, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle, Newsday, and the Miami Herald. D’Ambrosio is the founding editor of Big World Magazine, a multimedia magazine that showcases storytelling about places, and the founding director of the JMS summer program in Global Journalism in Bologna, Italy. 

Education

The London School of Economics and Political Science
M.Sc., Economic History

Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Public Communications
B.S., Journalism

Research

Mary D’Ambrosio researches in the areas of international journalism, migration, multimedia storytelling, and media innovation, with a focus on both traditional and new forms of storytelling about places. She was a special projects editor for Global Finance magazine in New York, a reporter for the Associated Press in Venezuela, and a correspondent and book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her work has also appeared in the Huffington Post, Anthropology Now, Islands, Newsday, the Miami Herald, and Worldpress.

During her years as a full-time journalist, D'Ambrosio wrote about Latin America’s transition from dictatorship to neoliberalism, the reconfiguration of Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Turkey’s struggles to survive as both a religious and a secular state. She also covered the IMF and the World Bank, and consulted for the United Nations. She’s now at work on a project that argues for humanizing migration stories, and a book about a family who helped bring down Communism in Albania.

One of her passions is helping students learn to report from other countries, and she directs a summer international reporting program that, after five exhilarating years in Istanbul, Turkey, will move to Bologna, Italy, starting in summer 2017. 

Funded Projects

Rutgers University-wide “internationalizing the curriculum” grant, awarded to develop a program of undergraduate study abroad initiatives, including two annual embedded classes to the U.K., France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and Guatemala (taught by three faculty); and a one-month journalism study abroad residential program in Europe. Rutgers Centers for Global Advancement and International Affairs ($10,000) 2016

Connecticut statewide AAUP Research Grant and department reassigned time for “Humanizing Migration,” an archive of written, photographic, and audio portraits of African and Middle Eastern migrants in Sicily and Izmir, Turkey, central entry points for mass migration to Europe ($4,750, full funding) 2015

Connecticut statewide AAUP Research Grant for research in Italy on the prospective book, “The Family that Killed Communism, and the Mad Act that Brought Down a Nation” ($3,880) 2013

Connecticut statewide Curriculum Development Grant, to develop a course in international journalism ($1,612) 2013

Connecticut statewide Faculty Development Grant, for training on the video editing program Final Cut Pro X, and purchase of a personal copy of the software ($1,694)

Selected Publications

D'Ambrosio, Mary. "Hordes at the Gates? Look Again." The Huffington Post. September 15, 2015.

D'Ambrosio, Mary. "Burying Minority Istanbul: Last Glimpses of the Cosmopolitan City | Anthropology Now." Anthropology Now. April 16, 2015.

D'Ambrosio, Mary. "Turkey: Tea on the Balcony." - Worldpress.org. July 3, 2014.

D'Ambrosio, Mary. "Return to the Belle Epoque." January/February 2001. http://www.marydambrosio.com/_b_return_to_the_belle_epoque__b__62342.htm.

D'Ambrosio, Mary. "The Myth of an Empty Frontier: Explorers’ Diseases Wiped out Native Populations Long before Settlers Arrived.” Review. San Francisco Chronicle, August 14, 2005.

Awards & Recognitions

Finalist, GoAbroad 2012 Innovative New Internship Program (for the international reporting program in Istanbul, Turkey), 2012 http://www.goabroad.com/news/goabroad-innovation-awards

Knight Digital Media Center multimedia fellowship, University of California, Berkeley, 2011

First Prize News, Hearst Corp., bridge collapse, 1987

First Prize Feature, Hearst Corp., Central American refugees, 1987

First Prize Enterprise, Hearst Corp., illegal toxic dumping, 1986

Research Keywords

Other

Projects

  • Big World Magazine (a multimedia magazine that showcases storytelling about places)
  • Kairos Magazine (development of the undergraduate magazine of the Rutgers Department of Journalism and Media Studies) 
  • The Battle for Istanbul (coverage of Turkey’s Gezi park uprising, by undergraduate students in the summer program in international reporting http://2013.istanbulstories.net/

Media Coverage

Other Publications

  • Mary D’Ambrosio (2019) On the Road During a Time of War: Migrant Journeys Through a Wary Europe, Anthropology Now, 11:3, 1-11, DOI: 10.1080/19428200.2019.1733824. Click for Article link or PDF version.