B.Tech (NIT Srinagar);
M.A. Convergent Journalism (MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia)
Assistant Professor of Practice
| hzaffar@jgu.edu.in | |
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B.Tech (NIT Srinagar);
M.A. Convergent Journalism (MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia)
Hanan Zaffar is a media practitioner, multimedia storyteller, and documentary filmmaker based out of India. His work primarily focuses on South Asian politics, minorities, human rights, and the environment. Zaffar’s reporting from the region has appeared in Time Magazine, The Guardian, VICE, Al Jazeera, Business Insider, Deutsche Welle (DW), TRT World, Newsweek, Euronews, The Diplomat, Middle East Eye, Channel 4, and other reputed international media houses.
He is the United Nations Foundation's 2025 Polio Press Fellow.
Zaffar has received several other prestigious grants and fellowships from the International Centre for Journalists (ICJ), the University of Sheffield, and the Human Rights & Religious Freedom (HRRF) Awards. He jointly received the “HRRF Best Text Reporting on Human Rights & Religious Freedom Award” for his investigative writings on discrimination against minorities and the marginalized in India.
He is also a recipient of the prestigious Journalists For Transparency Grant, that unearthed a humongous cross-border organ trafficking scam operating across South Asia.
He is one of the few reporters from Asia to be part of the Story Killers project—an international collaborative investigation involving more than 100 journalists from 30 countries that exposed the global, secretive world of disinformation mercenaries.
Zaffar has also extensively reported on the marginalization of Indian minorities for alternate and independent media platforms such as The Wire, Newslaundry, The Quint, Caravan Magazine, Article 14, Outlook Magazine, and Newsclick, among others.
Currently, he teaches at JIBS and heads its flagship media ensemble, JIBS Infotainment, which seeks to render complex academic content into accessible formats for a general audience—bridging the gap between scholarly inquiry and public understanding.
The films he has produced on gender-based violence and psychosocial issues for the institute have won several accolades at international film festivals including the Cefalù Film Festival (Italy), Erronka Munduan – Kursaal Film Festival (Spain), Jagran Film Festival (India), among others.
He has qualified the University Grants Commission’s National Eligibility Test (NET) in 2020.
Zaffar is particularly interested in South Asian politics and minorities through the media dissemination lens. His work at the intersection of media, human rights and environment has been published in several journals of repute. He also teaches an elective course on “The Art of Humane Storytelling in Media” that covers writing for media whilst navigating the associated ethical conundrums. He is also Contributing Editor (India) at Fair Planet, a global not-profit enterprise that operates a global network of over 200 specialised journalists and media experts in 60 countries, across all continents.
| hzaffar@jgu.edu.in |