Hello, I'm Jessie Williams, a freelance journalist and writer based in London.

 

My interest lies in international affairs, human rights, gender, culture, and politics – with the aim of exploring the human stories behind the headlines. I have worked on a diverse array of stories which have taken me around the world, from walking through minefields in Lebanon, to visiting refugee camps in Iraq to speak to girls finding freedom through sport, covering the 2023 elections in Turkey, investigating the impact of global aid cuts in post-Assad Syria, and speaking to women fleeing domestic abuse in Ukraine. Closer to home, I've reported on the UK's asylum-seeker housing and treatment of migrant survivors of domestic abuse, interviewed a child marriage survivor whose advocacy helped change UK law, and exposed a French university's #MeToo reckoning.

 

My work has been published in TIME Magazine, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, BBC News, New Lines Magazine, The Sunday Times,  The i Paper, Al Jazeera, Financial Times, The Independent, The New Humanitarian, The Telegraph, The Observer Magazine, openDemocracy, Huck Magazine, The New Arab, The Globe and Mail, and others. I also do reporting shifts at a number of publications, including The i Paper, The Independent, and The Guardian.

 

Additionally, I do photography, write a sporadic newsletter, and occasionally dabble in more creative writing. Previously, I worked as a co-producer on a project for BBC Arabic, and before that I was an assistant editor, staff writer, and podcast co-host at Restless Magazine. 

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I have a First Class degree in Journalism from City, University of London, and spent a year on exchange at Sciences Po Paris, Campus de Reims in France. I am HEFAT certified. 

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I am available for reporting shifts, assignments, and investigations.

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Awards & Acknowledgements 

2026 - Shortlisted essay for Woman, Mapped anthology published by Fly On The Wall Press.

2025 - Shortlisted for best feature at the Freelance Journalism Awards.

2024 - Finalist for the Wallace House Center for Journalists Livingston Award, for international reporting. 

2023 - Finalist for the Nonprofit News Breaking Barriers Award.

2023 - Judge for the Student Journalist category of the Amnesty Media Awards.

2022 - Winner of MHP Mischief's 30 To Watch Young Journalist Award in the international affairs category. 

2021 - Shortlisted for the British Journalism Awards in the social affairs, diversity and inclusion category.

2020 - Shortlisted for the Freelance Writing Awards.

2020 - Longlisted for One World Media's Coronavirus Reporting Award.

2019 - Finalist in the Student Journalist category of the Amnesty Media Awards.

2019 - Longlisted for the London Short Story Prize.

2013 - Finalist in British Vogue's annual writing competition.

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"My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does.”
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

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