Francesca Ebel, an undergraduate in the Department of Slavonic Studies (ab initio Russian and Ukrainian), has won the Hugh Cudlipp Student Journalism Award for her reporting on the war in Ukraine. 

A joint initiative of the London Press Club and Daily Mirror, the award is given to a student who has made ‘an outstanding contribution to journalism’ and explored ‘an issue of public interest or concern which exemplifies lucid and graphic communication’.  

In March 2015, Ebel travelled to Sloviansk and other government-controlled areas of east Ukraine to find out what was being done to support Ukrainians displaced by the war in Donbas. By interviewing local volunteers, representatives from Western NGOs and the refugees themselves, she cast light on an evolving humanitarian crisis largely overlooked in mainstream media reports.