Chicago-based Wendy Wei is among seven journalists selected in the latest highly competitive round. She chose PRIO as her host institution, where she will spend three months to work on her project, Contested Digital Sovereignty: States, Corporations and Cross Border Migration Control. Wendy is an independent investigative journalist and audio producer focusing on migration, race and gender – drawing on her earlier career evaluating refugee response programmes internationally. She pivoted from academia to journalism several years ago, but remains inspired by the social science approach to unpacking international migration.
Upon hearing the good news, Wendy said “I look forward to spending three months back with a community of researchers at PRIO, digging into the spread of migrant surveillance technology in the EU and North America. I aim to develop frameworks that support other journalists tell stories about human movement in collaboration with academic experts. Perhaps most challenging, I am determined to get the hang of cross-country skiing in Oslomarka.”
[Jørgen Carling](https://www.prio.org/people/5122), Research Professor in Migration studies and Co-Director of the *[PRIO Migration Centre](https://migration.prio.org/)*, said “we are thrilled Wendy has chosen PRIO for her residency and look forward to hosting her early next year. This is a unique opportunity to explore the interface between research communication and journalism – two worlds that share the same goal of making science accessible, but often approach it from different perspectives.”
PRIO consistently ranks among the top five Norwegian recipients of European Research Council (ERC) grants and [currently hosts six ERC frontier grants](https://www.prio.org/research/funders/european-research-council-erc-).
