Sylvia Poggioli
Sylvia Poggioli is senior European correspondent for NPR's International Desk covering political, economic, and cultural news in Italy, the Vatican, Western Europe, and the Balkans. Poggioli's on-air reporting and analysis have encompassed the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the turbulent civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and how immigration has transformed European societies.
Since joining NPR's foreign desk in 1982, Poggioli has traveled extensively for reporting assignments. These include going to Norway to cover the aftermath of the brutal attacks by a right-wing extremist; to Greece, Spain, and Portugal reporting on the eurozone crisis; and the Balkans where the last wanted war criminals have been arrested.
In addition, Poggioli has traveled to France, Germany, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, and Denmark to produce in-depth reports on immigration, racism, Islam, and the rise of the right in Europe.
She has also travelled with Pope Francis on several of his foreign trips, including visits to Cuba, the United States, Congo, Uganda, Central African Republic, Myanmar, and Bangladesh.
Throughout her career Poggioli has been recognized for her work with distinctions including the WBUR Foreign Correspondent Award, the Welles Hangen Award for Distinguished Journalism, a George Foster Peabody, National Women's Political Caucus/Radcliffe College Exceptional Merit Media Awards, the Edward Weintal Journalism Prize, and the Silver Angel Excellence in the Media Award. Poggioli was part of the NPR team that won the 2000 Overseas Press Club Award for coverage of the war in Kosovo. In 2009, she received the Maria Grazia Cutulli Award for foreign reporting.
In 2000, Poggioli received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Brandeis University. In 2006, she received an honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts Boston together with Barack Obama.
Prior to this honor, Poggioli was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences "for her distinctive, cultivated and authoritative reports on 'ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia." In 1990, Poggioli spent an academic year at Harvard University as a research fellow at Harvard University's Center for Press, Politics, and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government.
From 1971 to 1986, Poggioli served as an editor on the English-language desk for the Ansa News Agency in Italy. She worked at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. She was actively involved with women's film and theater groups.
The daughter of Italian anti-fascists who were forced to flee Italy under Mussolini, Poggioli was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in romance languages and literature. She later studied in Italy under a Fulbright Scholarship.
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Since the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, the media in Belgrade have been filled with details of how he lived on the run for more than a decade. The former Bosnian Serb leader wanted for war crimes was passing himself off as a New Age mystic. -
Former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic's arrest in Serbia is the first step in a process that will send him to a war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He stands accused of mass killings of Muslims during the Bosnian war.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is attending the last day of the NATO summit in Bucharest. Russia — and its tense relationship with the West — has loomed over the meeting. Putin is against allowing former Soviet republics Ukraine and Georgia onto NATO's membership track.
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President Bush has hit an obstacle in his push to get Ukraine and Georgia on track for NATO membership. However, the president did score a victory in his quest to get more NATO members to send their troops to Afghanistan.
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Russian officials visited Serbia on Monday to lend support to the country's claim to Kosovo. Though the country is divided between hardline nationalists and those who are Western-leaning, the country is united in its feeling of anger and betrayal over Kosovo's independence.
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Serbs in Kosovo rallied Monday to protest Kosovo's declaration of independence Sunday. President Bush, who is traveling this week in Africa, was first to recognize new independence, which is opposed by Russia. The move has prompted Serbia to recall its ambassador from Washington.
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The parliament of Kosovo, the autonomous region of Serbia, has declared its independence, spurred by the region's majority ethnic Albanians. The move comes nine years after the United States and NATO began airstrikes against Serbian military targets in the former Yugoslavia.
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The breakaway province of Kosovo is expected to declare its independence from Serbia this weekend. But the official separation can't take place until a new constitution has been approved by parliament. One of the biggest issues still being discussed is about guaranteeing the rights of ethnic minorities. -
As the Earth warms up, rising sea levels will increase the threat of storm surges and flooding. In some places, that will make exisiting problems worse. Venice, Italy, offers a glimpse at what may lie ahead. A major engineering project aims to protect it from the rising sea, but most Venetians seem to take high water in stride.
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The stars of the opera world are joined by well-known names from pop and rock music in Modena, Italy, for the funeral of tenor Luciano Pavarotti. Although he was never as popular in his home country, Pavarotti achieved worldwide fame as the man who brought opera to a new audience.
