2025 Recipient: Mohamed Hashem
Mohamed Hashem, BJ(Hons)’15, is the host and producer of Real Talk, an interview series on Middle East Eye, a digital news organization based in London, U.K., covering stories from the Middle East and North Africa.
Hashem’s career took off before graduation, with a call from Al Jazeera to offer an internship while he was still writing exams in his final year at King’s. Hashem began the internship as an online journalist in Doha, Qatar, which transformed into a position at Al Jazeera English and later at Al Jazeera Arabic as a producer on its flagship interview program. Then, he moved to Istanbul for a job with the Turkish public broadcaster TRT, where he helped create an Arabic digital division.
“My passion comes out when I sit down to interview someone,” said Hashem in a recent alumni profile. “That is what I love to do, to hear their take on a story. It’s about keeping the story going, developing the ideas and getting others to think about it.”
Hashem has been with Middle East Eye since September 2020. As the host of Real Talk, he explores unique stories and experiences and delves into critical current affairs discussions with insightful guests. Recent segments have featured guests such as celebrated author Ta-Nehisi Coates, Emmy-nominated filmmaker and actress Cherien Dabis, and Columbia professor Bruce Robbins.
2024 Recipient: Nicole Feriancek
Nicole Feriancek, BJ(Hons)’12, creativity, dedication to journalism and entrepreneurial spirit have taken her from reporting at small weekly newspapers to working as an assistant director on film sets across Canada, to digital work covering the Olympics in countries around the world, and now to the top of one of Canada’s most venerable newspapers. In 2023, Feriancek became Editor-in-Chief of both the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Sun. Since taking the helm, she has driven efforts to make the Citizen’s journalism more accessible, such as by spearheading a push for explainer-based reporting that is approachable to a wider audience.
Whether on the ground at the Olympic games or on her home turf, Feriancek has shown an ability to draw the best out of anyone, from student interns to reporters and photographers with decades of experience.
In this period of trimmed resources and discouraging job cuts throughout North America, she is a leader who maintains an unwavering belief in the importance of journalism as a vital tool to keep people informed, safe, healthy and aware of the world around them.
Photo by Tony Caldwell, Postmedia
2023 Recipient: Adrian Lee
Adrian Lee, BJ(Hons), 2011 is a writer and editor who currently works in The Globe and Mail’s opinion section, producing essays both long and short; he is also the host of The Globe’s podcast about the future of cities, City Space. Prior to his departure for The Globe in 2018, Lee was the Opinion Editor at Maclean’s Magazine, where he also won a Digital Publishing Award for Best Podcast for the Maclean’s pop-culture podcast and was a finalist in the short online-feature category. More recently, he was named a 2023 Journalism Fellow for the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE); he is also a former juror for the Polaris Music Prize. In the spirit of Isaiah Berlin’s thought exercise of fox-like thinkers, Lee’s writing has spanned a great many subjects of interest to him—politics, music, technology, film, sports, historical arcana— and his work has appeared on CBC Radio and Television and in the Canadian Press, Agence France Presse, and the Michener-nominated alt-weekly The Coast.
