Shaheen Pasha

Shaheen Pasha is an assistant teaching professor at Penn State, focused on mass incarceration and prison education. She is also cofounder and co-executive director of Prison Journalism Project, a national, independent nonprofit initiative that publishes and teaches journalism to incarcerated writers. Prior to joining Penn State, Pasha was an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she launched a successful, immersive explanatory journalism course at the Hampshire County Jail, bringing together incarcerated students and journalism students at UMass. Pasha was awarded the Knight Nieman Visiting Fellowship at Harvard University to expand her work, teaching journalism behind bars. She is also the recipient of a Fulbright Specialist designation to advise on journalism curriculum internationally.

Pasha is a veteran journalist with 20 years of experience in the field. She worked as an international correspondent, covering legal issues and Islamic finance for Thomson Reuters in Dubai. She was also a staff writer for CNNMoney in New York, where she covered legal issues, the Enron trial and the Supreme Court. She started her career at Dow Jones Newswires where she had a daily column in the Wall Street Journal and appeared as a daily correspondent for CNBC Asia, covering international stock action. Her freelance work has appeared in Nieman Reports, New England Public Radio, Dallas Morning News, Narratively and USA Today among other publications. She is the co-editor of the anthology, Mirror on the Veil: A Collection of Personal Essays on Hijab and Veiling (CCCP Press). Her essay on women’s anger was featured in the newly published anthology Burn it Down (Seal Press).

• Prison Journalism Project
• Shaheen Pasha Contently

• Penn State students learn about incarcerated people by going to the source — and vice versa
• Bellisario College honors faculty, staff with Deans’ Excellence Awards
• Pasha is 2022 recipient of emerging faculty award for engaged scholarship
• Faculty member among leads for project addressing journalism, global religion
• Professor brings prison journalism project, new perspective to Penn State
• Penn State study finds Islamophobia comes on a swarm of bots
• Penn State to offer course where journalism students can connect with incarcerated people
• Take Note: Shaheen Pasha on teaching journalism in prisons
• Political Islamophobia may look differently online than in person
• Muslim-American politicians face Islamophobia online, but hardly ever from their constituents
• Behind Bars: The Prison Journalism Project
• Why it’s important to reduce COVID-19 in prisons
• Empowering incarcerated people to tell their own stories
• Penn State professor finds passion through nonprofit Prison Journalism Project