Sylvia Poggioli
Sylvia Poggioli is senior European correspondent for NPR's International Desk covering political, economic, and cultural news in Italy, the Vatican, Western Europe, and the Balkans. Poggioli's on-air reporting and analysis have encompassed the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the turbulent civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and how immigration has transformed European societies.
Since joining NPR's foreign desk in 1982, Poggioli has traveled extensively for reporting assignments. These include going to Norway to cover the aftermath of the brutal attacks by a right-wing extremist; to Greece, Spain, and Portugal reporting on the eurozone crisis; and the Balkans where the last wanted war criminals have been arrested.
In addition, Poggioli has traveled to France, Germany, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, and Denmark to produce in-depth reports on immigration, racism, Islam, and the rise of the right in Europe.
She has also travelled with Pope Francis on several of his foreign trips, including visits to Cuba, the United States, Congo, Uganda, Central African Republic, Myanmar, and Bangladesh.
Throughout her career Poggioli has been recognized for her work with distinctions including the WBUR Foreign Correspondent Award, the Welles Hangen Award for Distinguished Journalism, a George Foster Peabody, National Women's Political Caucus/Radcliffe College Exceptional Merit Media Awards, the Edward Weintal Journalism Prize, and the Silver Angel Excellence in the Media Award. Poggioli was part of the NPR team that won the 2000 Overseas Press Club Award for coverage of the war in Kosovo. In 2009, she received the Maria Grazia Cutulli Award for foreign reporting.
In 2000, Poggioli received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Brandeis University. In 2006, she received an honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts Boston together with Barack Obama.
Prior to this honor, Poggioli was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences "for her distinctive, cultivated and authoritative reports on 'ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia." In 1990, Poggioli spent an academic year at Harvard University as a research fellow at Harvard University's Center for Press, Politics, and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government.
From 1971 to 1986, Poggioli served as an editor on the English-language desk for the Ansa News Agency in Italy. She worked at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. She was actively involved with women's film and theater groups.
The daughter of Italian anti-fascists who were forced to flee Italy under Mussolini, Poggioli was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in romance languages and literature. She later studied in Italy under a Fulbright Scholarship.
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In a new encyclical addressing everything from fraternity and income inequality to immigration and social justice, the pope argues the pandemic has shown that free market capitalism has failed. -
Tuscany's wine windows, each 12 inches high and 8 inches wide, were indispensable during a 17th century plague. They've became useful again during the coronavirus pandemic — even after lockdown ended. -
Italy dramatically reduced its coronavirus cases after its early days as the epicenter of the pandemic. It is, however, seeing a resurgence of the virus as businesses, including discos, reopen.
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The Vatican has long maintained that Pope Pius XII did everything he could to save Jewish lives, but newly unearthed papers have renewed accusations of complicit silence against him. -
New revelations emerge from the long-secret Vatican archive about what Pope Pius XII knew — and did — about the Nazis mass murder of Jews.
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"The reality is that laborers work at the limit of human dignity," Aboubakar Soumahoro tells NPR. He's the subject of a new documentary, The Invisibles, shot at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. -
The pandemic has revealed how dependent Italians are on migrant farm workers. The new documentary, Invisible, profiles a migrant champion as he raises the awareness of their plight.
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Italy's prime minister, health and interior ministers faced hours of questioning in Rome as prosecutors opened an investigation into possible mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis. -
The country faces a shortfall of up to 350,000 laborers just when it is bracing for deep economic impacts from the novel coronavirus pandemic. -
Right-wing populists in Italy are battling more liberal politicians who want to give work permits to undocumented immigrants, who could fill seasonal labor shortages in the agriculture sector.
