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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Pope Francis is in Egypt for a two day trip during which he hopes to strengthen ties with Muslim leaders and also give support to Egypt's ancient Coptic Christian sect, which has been the target of deadly attacks in recent weeks.
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Bannon has made common cause with those in the Vatican who resist the pope's liberal moves. Francis' supporters worry that after Trump's victory, the pope is a lonely progressive on the global stage. -
Italy is an art theft playground. An elite police squad combats the illicit trade in antiquities and art, but the chase is still on for a stolen Caravaggio painting — No. 1 on the most-wanted list. -
Those arriving in Italy are more likely to be from sub-Saharan Africa rather than the Middle East. Most have little understanding of a process that can take years.
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The pope worked to repair relations within the Christian world, but things were tougher in the Catholic world. A church historian says no other pope has met as much opposition from bishops and clergy.
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Much of what is known of Artemisia Gentileschi comes from her testimony in the trial of a painter who raped her. "Now we try to go back and fill in and properly understand," says a curator. -
The big winners in the referendum are Italy's two major euroskeptic parties — the anti-immigration Northern League and the maverick 5-Star Movement, which waged vitriolic campaigns. -
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi claims he'll resign after this weekend's defeat of his constitutional reform intended to streamline government. Also, Austria elects a leftist president.
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Italy's had more than 60 governments in the past 70 years. A referendum Sunday is designed to make governing less chaotic, but could bring down the country's leader and give Europe another jolt. -
Italy received almost 160,000 arrivals this year and the nation says it can't manage the flow. Meanwhile, it's creating a DNA database to help ID migrants who've perished on the way.
