Şeyma Bayram is a Kurdish journalist, writer, editor, and educator based in New York. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and a Lecturer at its School of International and Public Affairs.
She was a 2023-2024 Spencer Education Fellow at Columbia Journalism School and the 2022-2023 Reflect America Fellow at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., where she reported for NPR’s climate and visuals desks and produced for All Things Considered. Before that, she covered race, violence against LGBTQ+ communities, gun legislation, the 2020 general election, abortion access, and the legacies of redlining and racism in urban planning as a staff reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio.
Her news photography has appeared in The Associated Press, CNN, The Washington Post, and other outlets.
Şeyma began her journalism career covering local government and criminal justice at an alt-weekly in Mississippi.
She holds master’s degrees from Columbia Journalism School and the State University of New York at Binghamton. She is from the Kurdish region of Turkey, and was raised in The Netherlands and upstate New York.