Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice | PNDP

The Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice (2010-2018) gives students the skills to explain the world around them to the people around them. The program teaches students to shape global issues into multimedia stories that are narrative and compelling.

Deep narrative storytelling is important in the age of information immediacy and the 24-hour news cycle. Students will be trained through immersive practice to identify specific stories that can reveal larger, complex issues. A genre with multiple layers and contexts, narrative storytelling can render the issues at hand more essential and compelling, less formal and constrained than conventional reporting.

The Program is not training journalism students. It is taking students interested in politics, history, economics, international relations, conflict resolution, technology and engineering ‒ students who wish to engage in the world with rigor and depth ‒ and teaching them storytelling and journalism. But this is a particular kind of story-telling, one that involves immersion in a subject and that produces captivating works through video, photography and writing.

The Program seeks to promote progressive change by amplifying relevant voices, breaking down barriers to understanding, advancing human dignity, and highlighting social injustices. The program seeks to engage audiences that are local, national, and international.

How It Works

The principle focus of the Program is practice underwritten by a sound understanding of theory. Through collaborative partnerships and extended fieldwork, the Program will teach, present and create narrative documentary work. Students will learn how to apply the craft of storytelling across a range of platforms and be encouraged to be innovative, taking into account the habits of consumers from the traditional printed form to digital delivery.

The Program will teach its students how to ask the right questions, encourage them to challenge their preconceptions and prejudices, and teach them strategies to look beyond those limitations.

Alumni

Amy Connors '11

Amy Connors is a photo editor for The New Yorker currently living in New York, New York. She graduated from Tufts University in May 2012 with the highest honors of Summa Cum Laude.

Sam James '10

Samuel James is a photographer, writer and educator from Cincinnati, Ohio. His work addresses issues of inequity, energy and the environment. He is the recipient of the Overseas Press Club Olivier Rebbot Award, the International Center of Photography Infinity Award and a 2013 Getty Images Editorial Grant. He is the co-founder of the Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice at the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University and a Contributing Artist at Harper’s Magazine.

Christina Goldbaum '14

United States - Boston

Christina Goldbaum (A14) completed her undergraduate degree in Political Science and Entrepreneurial Leadership studies at Tufts University. She has worked in East Africa and Latin America on various development and human rights focused projects ranging from holistic education programs in Tanzania to the protection of indigenous populations' rights in Bolivia. She has served as the co-director of BUILD, a student-led, collaborative rural development organization working with resettled combatants in Guatemala and with a community in Tamil, Nadu India, and was the Undergraduate Coordinator for the Empower Program for Social Entrepreneurship in 2012-13. She has also conducted research internationally on public health programs in Rwanda and local perspectives on US military involvement in Uganda, and was a member of the EPIIC colloquium on Conflict in the 21st Century. Her interests include social entrepreneurship, non-fiction story-telling, and the intersection of entrepreneurial and political culture.

Search form

Programs

Courses

Experiential education and research

International Exchange

Expert Mentoring

Social Entrepreneurship

Awards

Past Programs