About
Alexander Durie is an independent multimedia journalist, writer, and photographer. Raised between London and the South of France, he is of Vietnamese, Italian, Canadian, and Swedish origin.
His work has been published by leading international news organisations, including The Guardian, TIME Magazine, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Financial Times, The Economist, Reuters, The Independent, Rolling Stone, ARTE, Variety, The New Arab, Internazionale, The British Journal of Photography, LitHub, and more.
He covers stories at the intersection of human rights, culture, and memory, with a particular focus on the Mediterranean and MENA region. His varied interests reflect his multicultural identity. They include: migration and exile, world cinema, music, and literature, social justice, climate change, housing issues, decolonial movements, radicalisation and extremism, LGBTQ+ and women’s rights, football, European politics, the Levant region (especially Lebanon and Israel-Palestine), and mental health.
Alex has both on-the-ground and newsroom experience, and is passionate about merging new multimedia tools for storytelling purposes. He has contributed dispatches from a dozen countries across three continents, interviewing major world figures in culture and politics, including actors Hiam Abbass and Tahar Rahim, organisers of the 2019 Sudan Uprising, and the head of the largest far-right youth group in France. Meanwhile, his short and mid-form videos for The New Arab – especially during Israel’s war on Gaza – amassed millions of views on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube for their empathetic and original approach.
He holds a Joint Master’s in Journalism & International Affairs from Sciences Po Paris, where he majored in Human Rights and Migration. Before then, he read Comparative Literature & Film Studies at King’s College London.
Alex is fully bilingual in English and French, speaks intermediate Spanish, basic Italian and German, and is learning Arabic. He usually doesn’t refer to himself in the third person.
Awards & Exhibitions
2024 - Selected for the Magmatic School of Environmental Journalism, a programme for young journalists to cover urgent climate issues in the Mediterranean region
2024 - Rory Peck Training Fund grantee, awarded for freelance journalists to complete a Hostile Environment and First Aid Training (HEFAT) course
2023 - Awarded Best Video at the WAN-IFRA Digital Media Awards Middle East for “Germany’s Palestine Problem”, a short doc produced for The New Arab
2022 - Presentation of a long-term documentary photo project, Verano Mediterráneo, at the international photo festival ‘Face à la Mer’ in Tangier, Morocco
2021 - Two photos selected for the community exhibition ‘Analog: The Chemistry of Feeling,’ Gulf Photo Plus: Dubai’s Centre for Photography, Dubai, UAE
2020 - Single photo taken during lockdown selected for the group exhibition ‘Postcards from Quarantine,’ The Old Vault Gallery, London, UK
2019 - MediaLab Campus grantee, awarded to 15 top journalism students in France who plan to intern in the MENA region.
2018 - Single photo nominated for Kujaja’s World Street Photography photobook
2017 - Photo-documentary project on the Calais ‘Jungle’ exhibited at:
Migration Museum, London, UK
Migration Hub Network, Berlin, Germany
2017 - Single double-exposed photo exhibited at The London Photo Festival, UK