Şeyma Bayram is a Kurdish-American journalist, writer, editor, and educator based in New York. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Journalism. She is also a Lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Şeyma 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 the climate and visuals desks and produced for All Things Considered. She has covered race, violence against LGBTQ+ communities, gun legislation, the 2020 general election, abortion access and legacies of redlining and racism in urban planning for the Akron Beacon Journal in Akron, Ohio. She began her journalism career reporting on local government and criminal justice at an alt-weekly in Jackson, Mississippi.
Her news photography has appeared in The Associated Press, CNN, The Washington Post, and other outlets.
Şeyma 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.