Junior Evan Harris wins Pulitzer Center Fellowship
Reporting project will focus on overtourism in Bali
The Pulitzer Center has awarded a fellowship to Wake Forest University junior Evan Harris. The $3,000 award will support reporting on the impact of overtourism on Bali, Indonesia.
A politics and international affairs major from Greensboro, Harris plans to use writing, photography and audio recording to tell the stories of the local business owners affected by the dramatic surge in tourism and related development on the island.
“Last year, 6.3 million visited, outnumbering the island’s population of 4.4 million,” Harris wrote in his application. “Bali’s tourism office projects 6.5 million will visit in 2025, challenging the current infrastructure in place.”
An Indonesian-American, Harris has visited Bali several times. In 2023, he completed an ethnographic research project in Indonesia funded by Wake Forest through a Richter Scholarship.
“I’ve seen changes caused by overtourism in real-time,” he said. “Each year, new developments crop up across heavily visited areas such as Ubud, Canggu and Seminyak, causing increased traffic congestion and the rapid degradation of rice paddies.”
Harris credits studio art professor John Pickel for helping him hone his skills working with 35mm photography, the film format he plans to use for the multimedia reporting project.
“Evan is an extraordinarily talented multimedia journalist – writing, photography, video – and has demonstrated those talents as photo editor of the Old Gold and Black (Wake Forest’s student newspaper),” said journalism professor Justin Catanoso, the program’s liaison to the Pulitzer Center. “Evan is well-suited to report on the problems of overtourism in Bali, Indonesia, a city he has visited in recent summers. He intends to use his range of journalistic skills to tell the story in words, images and sounds. The Pulitzer panel that selected Evan was extremely enthusiastic about his project proposal.”
The Pulitzer Center raises awareness of underreported global issues through direct support for quality journalism across all media platforms and a unique program of education and public outreach. The Wake Forest University Journalism Program has been affiliated with the Pulitzer Center’s Campus Consortium since 2012.
When completed, the work of Harris and other reporting fellows will be published on the Pulitzer Center website. Wake Forest’s journalism program also provides support for the fellowship. Harris is the University’s thirteenth fellowship recipient.
Categories: Awards & Recognition, Research & Discovery
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