Maggy Zanger
Maggy Zanger, M.A., M.S.L. is a Professor of Practice in the School of Journalism and affiliated faculty with Online Graduate Programs in Human Rights Practice, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Center for Border and Global Journalism. She has a master's degree in law from Yale Law School where she focused on international law and human rights; and a master's in journalism from the University of Arizona.
She specializes in international journalism, in the Middle East and Muslim world in particular, and has conducted extensive research on the development of the news media in Iraqi Kurdistan. During her fall 2017 sabbatical from the UA she taught journalism classes at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani, and conducted research on the impact of violence, economic crisis and expansion of extremist religious ideology on Iraqi Kurdistan’s journalists.
Professor Zanger taught journalism at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, from 1999 to 2003 where she assisted in the development of AUC’s diploma program in Forced Migration and Refugee Studies and has given numerous talks concerning refugees and internally displaced populations in Iraq, and Kurdish relations with Iraq and neighboring countries.
While at AUC she made several trips into northern Iraq to research the development of the Kurdish news media. She covered the US invasion in 2003 as a regional analyst for NBC News and writing dispatches for the Cairo Times and then stayed on to work as the country director for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a London-based media development organization. In 2003 and 2004 she started centers in Baghdad and Sulaimaniyah, Iraq, to train Iraqi journalists to work for independent news media.
She developed, wrote the proposal and directed a $1 million, three-year partnership program to develop Afghan journalism education with Nangarhar University, Jalalabad Afghanistan. Developed Study Abroad programs in Oman and Dubai, and a Fulbright-funded two-month program in Egypt.