Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi is a freelance multimedia journalist who works across photography, writing, videography, and audio, with a focus on regions affected by conflict, social unrest, and humanitarian crises. She is based in Nairobi, Kenya, with occasional time spent in Iraq, Romania and USA.

Her work has been published by outlets including The New York Times (newspaper and magazine), The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Bloomberg News, Business Insider, and Le Monde, and commissioned by international organizations such as UNICEF, UNHCR, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, the International Committee of the Red Cross, International Medical Corps, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Alhindawi has been recognized by LensCulture’s Top 50 Emerging Talents (2014) and received the ICRC Humanitarian Visa d’Or award (2015) for her coverage of the Minova rape trial—the largest mass rape trial to date in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She was also named to PDN’s 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch (2018). Her photographs from Darfur—where she is among the few international journalists to have entered the region since the conflict resumed in April 2023—were included in American Photography 41 (2024). Her images from South Sudan were selected for American Photography 42 (2025).

Alhindawi’s work is informed by a multicultural background and lived experience of displacement. Born in rural Romania to a Romanian mother and Iraqi father, Alhindawi became a refugee in childhood—first displaced to the former Yugoslavia before resettling in Canada. These formative experiences led her to pursue careers in humanitarian aid and human rights, in which she held management and research roles with organizations such as the United Nations Development Programme, Save the Children, and Oxfam, working on the ground in conflict- and disaster-affected regions. In 2013, she shifted her professional focus fully to journalism.

Alhindawi holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Economics and Neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University and is completing a Master of Arts degree in International Development at American University School of International Service (expected December 2026).

She speaks English, Romanian, Spanish, and French.