Institute

The Wake Forest University Environmental and Epistemic Justice Initiative (EEJI) is a multi-pronged Mellon Foundation funded research, teaching, and community engagement project that places at its center environmental and epistemic justice. The EEJI critically examines how and in what ways race and regimes of racial knowledge shape and inform our scholarly practices, public policies, and normative concerns. 

The Institute will highlight issues of race, racialization, and the environment at the local and regional level with possible applicability to other communities across the United States. 

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2026 Institute 

The EEJI Journalism Fellowship provides an opportunity for 4-6 early to mid-career journalists to attend the EEJI Summer Institute with the goal of improving coverage of the many environmental justice issues, while helping to diversify the ranks of environmental journalism. This year’s institute will take place at INSTEP-WFU London, England from June 1-June 4, 2026.

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2026 Institute Director 

Melba Newsome is an independent journalist, editor and writer who has written and published hundreds of articles for national, regional and local publications including Scientific American, Newsweek, Bloomberg, Wired, AARP, Charlotte, Glamour, Playboy, Oprah, Reader’s Digest, Parade and The New York Times. She began her career writing dramatic narratives about everything from serial killer groupies to women in harems for women’s magazines, including Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Woman’s Day, and Redbook. Her reporting is focused primarily on health, science, and the environment, with a focus on social justice and health disparities. A feature in O, The Oprah Magazine about genetic testing earned her the June Roth Award for Medical Journalism. She received a Reynolds Institute fellowship and an EWA Reporting fellowship. She has reported extensively on the physiological, emotional, and societal impact of the coronavirus. She was a 2021 MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative Journalism Fellow, publishing stories with Yale360 and other news outlets.

2026 Institute Faculty 

Andrea King Collier is a journalist and author who focuses on issues of publichealth and health policy, women’s issues and community outreach. She has worked for over 40 years with communities on issues such as reducing health disparities, climate equity, mental health, infant mortality, prevention of chronic disease, end of life care, childhood obesity, men’s health, women’s health, and HIV/AIDS. She has worked with local, state and national organizations around engaging community around health issues and in creating content to help educate those communities.

She is the author of two health related books, Still With Me…A Daughter’s Journey of Love and Loss and The Black Woman’s Guide to Black Men’s Health. Andrea is also an award-winning storyteller. She has appeared on the TEDx stage, and she has told stories with The Moth on their Mainstage, around the country. Her work on using humor appears in their Tell Me A Story book.

In addition, she is an adjunct professor in the Meharry School of Global Health with a focus on communicating to achieve health equity.

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Blending her roles as a journalist and medical sociologist, she draws upon her upbringing in industrial Akron, Ohio, to center the lived experiences of people bearing the brunt of pollution, systemic neglect and corporate power. The Center for Public Integrity and Belt Magazine co published her three-part series, “Unintended Consequences: The Rubber Industry’s Toxic Legacy in Akron,” with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Honors included the National Press Foundation Thomas L. Stokes Award for Best Energy and Environment Writing and the AIHA Occupational Health Story of the Year. 

She is completing In My Backyard: How Pollution and Climate Change Are Making Black America Sick to Death for HarperCollins. She is also co-author of Born to Win: The Authorized Biography of Althea Gibson and a contributor to We Refuse to Be Silent: Women’s Voices for Justice for Black Men. 

Dr. Rice Lamb earned her MBA and doctorate from Howard University and bachelor’s in journalism from The Ohio State University. 

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Justin Worland is a senior correspondent at TIME where he writes about climate change and the intersection of politics, policy, and society. For the last decade, his stories have explored how climate change—both its effects and our response to it—is reshaping the world around us. In 2022, Worland was named the inaugural Climate Journalist of the Year by Covering Climate Now. Justin serves as a founding board member at the Uproot Project, a non-profit that works to diversify environmental journalism. He is the journalism fellow at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute and the Outrider Foundation fellow at TIME. Justin graduated from Harvard College where he studied history.

2026 Institute Fellows

Jaha Nailah Avery is an African American woman and proud Southerner. Hailing from Asheville, North Carolina, she received her law degree from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied constitutional and civil rights law. She spent several years in the startup tech space before embarking on her professional writing career, and her work can be found in Essence Magazine, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, and more. Her aim is to always document, celebrate, and preserve the stories of Black people, communities, and history. In her first book, Those Who Saw The Sun, she interviewed survivors of Jim Crow and compiled their accounts together in one collection. Her second book, I Heard, is an illustrated poem spanning over 400 years of Black history. She recently wrapped production on a season of an investigative podcast (Threshold) focusing on the history of Cancer Alley outside New Orleans, which releases in June 2026.

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Nichole Currie is an audio producer and journalist with The Pulse, WHYY’s nationally distributed health and science program.

Originally from Raeford, North Carolina, she moved to Philadelphia to study journalism at Temple University, where she got her start in community reporting. She joined The Pulse in 2021to begin her career in podcast production. Today, she produces narrative-driven audio segments and reports stories that explore the human side of science, medicine, health, and innovation—breaking down complex topics while keeping the people living through them front and center.

At The Pulse, Nichole works across the production process, from pitching and reporting to scripting and editing. She was nominated for Health & Science Reporting of the Year by the 2025 Philly News Awards. She also hosted and reported Thriving, a year-long reporting project. Her work has also contributed to nationally distributed stories through NPR.

Outside of work, she’s a cinephile — drawn to character-driven storytelling in film.

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Kani’ya Davis is a graduating senior at North Carolina A&T State University where she will receive her bachelors degree in journalism and mass communications this Spring. Davis is a native of Columbia, South Carolina and plans to use her education to become an investigative reporter, specifically producing stories about the intersection of health, race and class.

Previously, Davis was a daily news intern at North Carolina Public Radio- WUNC as well as McClatchy’s, The State. She was also a 2025 PBS News Student Reporting Labs Climate fellow and an MIT Knight Science Journalism HBCU fellow.

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Aissa Dearing is a doctoral candidate in Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. She is from Durham, North Carolina, and draws upon her lived experience in climate and environmental justice organizing to research the enduring impacts of fossil fuel, petrochemical, and agribusiness industries on marginalized communities. She works extensively with and remains accountable to Tribal Nations, heirs’ property communities, and frontline organizations on these matters. She wrote a monthly column entitled ‘Unearthing Justice’ for JSTOR Daily to ensure that investigation of timely climate and environmental issues remained accessible and accountable to the general public.

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Nina B. Elkadi is an Iowa-based writer. She has been published in National Geographic, Civil Eats, Inside Climate News, and more. Most recently, she was an Editor at Large at Sentient, where she primarily investigated pollution and labor. She is an incoming MFA student at the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program, where she will be an Iowa Arts Fellow. You can follow her work at Corn Belt Confidential.

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Britney Hamilton is a national meteorologist with Spectrum News. She covers local weather and severe weather events across the country. She has worked in many locations in the southeast including Raleigh, Atlanta, and Charlotte. Britney has covered countless severe weather outbreaks, hurricanes, winter storms, and other weather and climate phenomena.

Hurricane Katrina sparked her interest in weather when the storm devastated the Gulf Coast.Britney wanted to know everything about hurricanes – structure, forecasting, and impacts. This early interest in hurricanes grew into a full-fledged love for weather.

Britney earned a B.S. in meteorology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She attended North Carolina A&T State University and received a M.S. in physics with a concentration in atmospheric science.

Britney’s early research focused on impacts and behaviors beyond the science of weather and climate disasters. She continues this work in weather coverage and digital storytelling.

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Ashley Miznazi is a multimedia climate reporter at the Miami Herald covering how South Florida is adapting to a warmer and wetter world. Over the last few years covering the frontlines of climate change, she has reported on the effects of intensifying, deadly extreme heat on farmworkers and prisoners, explored the state falling behind on installing fast chargers for electric cars and dug into the county’s growing trash crisis as its landfill reaches capacity. She then transforms her writing into videos for YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.

Ashley attended the University of Texas and loves to at-home compost with earthworms.