Peter Yeung is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Paris who covers a broad range of beats including climate, global health, migration, human rights, biodiversity, Indigenous cultures, and cities, often through a critical, solutions-orientated lens. He specialises in on-the-ground reporting about under-covered issues involving and giving a voice to the world’s most marginalised groups, filing stories from across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. He aims for non-extractive, trauma-informed, impact-driven and low-carbon reporting, generally travelling overland and by public transport during trips that last several months, and collaborates with local reporters whenever it is financially viable as a freelancer. With a focus on visual journalism, Peter usually has a camera, drone, or new piece of tech in hand, and uses digital storytelling, data analysis and visualisation as much as possible in his reporting. He speaks English, French and Spanish fluently (as well as a few other languages to a very mediocre level), is a licensed drone pilot, a PADI Advanced-certified scuba diver and has received Hostile Environment training to report in high-risk areas, including war zones.
Impact of his work includes a $100 millioninvestment from the Global Fund to "scale up of community health services" in 10 African countries, after reporting for The BBC on underfunding issues from that provider in Liberia; a pledge by the UK Government to invest £30 millioninto Kenya’s Early Warning Systems that came two months after a report for The Telegraph noting shortfalls in funding; a$15 million fund announced for a pioneering scheme he reported on for NPR about child mortality reduction in Mali, with the nonprofit involved noting the “global attention” his article created; a $3 million climate fund for Indigenous peoples in Indonesia announced after reporting for the Washington Post on the issue, andthe Mayor of London announced a £300,000 outreach team specifically citing figures uncovered through his reporting on rough sleepers on London’s night buses.
He also writes about food culture, animal trafficking, gender issues, infectious diseases, housing, extreme heat, rainforests, oceans, cybercrime, refugees, race politics, French current affairs, Francophone Africa, countercultural movements, contemporary visual arts,, mental health, radicalisation, prisons, world cinema, vegetarianism, off-the-beaten-path travel and croissants (as well as all kinds of pastries).
Raised by a single mother, Peter won both the George Viner Memorial Fund and the Santander Postgraduate Scholarship, allowing him to study on the pioneering MA in interactive journalism at London's City University — focusing on data journalism and new technologies —where he received the highest mark of the year in his class. During his BA degree in social anthropology at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, where he received first class honours in all of his final year modules, Peter specialised on the West Africa region, wrote regularly for local newspapers and student publications, and was an editor at both The SOAS Spirit and London Student,at the timeEurope’s largest student publication. He received a Warwick Apprenticing Charity bursary to help fund undergraduate study, alongside working part-time in restaurants and bars full of unreasonably drunk people.
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