CDDRL
616 Serra St.
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
CDDRL
616 Serra St.
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

abebe@stanford.edu

Research Interests
New media, freedom of expression, human rights, democracy, politics in the Horn of Africa and Ethiopia.

Abebe Gellaw came to Stanford as the 2008-09 John S. Knight Fellow for Professional Journalists and Yahoo International Fellow. He is currently a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and visiting scholar at the Centre on Democracy Development and Rule of Law. He is working on a book project, Ethiopia under Meles: Why the transition from military rule to democracy failed.

He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science and International Relations from the Addis Ababa University ['95] and a post-graduate diploma in law from London Metropolitan University ['03]. He began his career in journalism in 1993 as a freelance writer focusing on human rights and political issues. He worked for various print and online publications including the Ethiopian Herald, the only English daily in the country. Abebe is also a founding editor of Addisvoice.com, a bilingual online journal focusing on Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.

He has received many awards and bursaries including, an international journalism training bursary at the London-based Reuters Foundation in 1998. He also received a Champions of Change Millennium Award in 2002 and was subsequently awarded lifetime membership of the Millennium Awards Fellowships in the UK. He also received a British Telecom Community Connections Award that same year. In 2007, he was honored by the UK branch of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy for his commendable journalism and advocacy endeavors.

His recent articles appeared in the Far East Economic Review and Global Integrity's  The Corruption Notebooks 2008, a collection of essays on corruption and abuse of power written by leading journalists around the word. 

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Sample publications

Free market without freedom [Addis Voice]

Free Birtukan Mideksa [Far East Economic Review]

A dismal proclamation [Global Integrity]

A tale of two despots and the great powers [Addis Voice]

Video interviews

Meet Abebe Gellaw, Yahoo International Journalism Fellow [Yahoo]

On press freedom and the Internet [ABC 7]

Other affiliations
Knight Fellowship, Yahoo! International Fellow, Anna Lindh Fellowship [FCE]