Monica Jha
GRANTEE
Monica Jha is an independent journalist and filmmaker based in India. Her work focuses on marginalization, and she specializes in investigative reporting and narrative storytelling.
Her reporting projects include an oral history of India’s fisherwomen and investigations into the social and environmental costs of AI data centers, the illegal shark fin trade between India and East Asia, and violence perpetrated by illegal sand miners.
Jha has received two Online Journalism Awards (2025), three Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Awards (2024 and 2025), a One World Media Award (2025), an Asian American Journalists Association Award (2025), the New Media Writing Prize (2024), the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Outstanding Investigative Reporting Award (2023), a Fetisov Journalism Award (2021), and the Stop Slavery Media Award (2020).
She has also been a finalist for the Online Journalism Awards (2025), the True Story Awards (2021), the SOPA Awards (2022 and 2020), and the Lorenzo Natali Prize (2015).
Jha has received reporting grants from the Pulitzer Center (2021 and 2025); the Environmental Reporting Collective (2023 and 2026); the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime and Oxpeckers (2021); and the Impact Journalism Grant (2019).
