Sonya Fatah

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Sonya Fatah joined Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Journalism in 2017 and is currently an Assistant Professor. She has taught at other journalism schools both in Canada and in India and has taught Feature Writing, Law and Ethics, Social Issues in Journalism, Narrative Writing, Magazine Workshop and Reporting and Writing. Over the last two years she has co-led the Ryersonian and the Ryerson Review of Journalism. This year, in addition to being in the RRJ,

Sonya will also be teaching Urban Society and Politics for Journalists.

Sonya is also working on a research-cum-teaching project on live journalism. That project – stitched! – has been part of an inter-disciplinary FCAD course that explores the development of a narrative project for a live audience. This semester stitched! is part of a Global Campus Studio portfolio and will be in partnership with LSBU’s journalism students in London. Sonya is also the recipient of a FOLiE! grant through a partnership between FCAD’s live entertainment lab and Cirque du Soleil.

Most of Sonya’s working life as a journalist was spent overseas in India and Pakistan, covering South Asia for Canadian and U.S. publications. She was reporter-on-assignment for the Globe and Mail and later a special correspondent for the Toronto Star. She was India correspondent for the Boston-based GlobalPost, now PRI. While in India she wrote a column on India-Pakistan issues for the Times of India, the world’s largest paper by circulation and readership. She occasionally writes about Indo-Pakistan issues for the Globe and Mail.

Sonya also has experience with audio and video documentary journalism. In addition to developing audio documentaries, her full-length feature doc, I, DANCE., was the result of an art documentation grant from the Indian Foundation for the Arts. The film, which follows a Pakistani classical dancer’s journey to use dance as a form of political dissent against state- imposed nationalism and chauvinism, screened in several cities across South Asia, as well as festivals in India, Nepal and the United States. In August 2019, it was one of several documentaries showcases as part of the Amritsar Film Festival.

Sonya’s narrative feature work has been published in several magazines across the world including Fortune, Columbia Journalism Review, Caravan, The Groundtruth Project, Walrus magazine and many others. She has also received several grants to pursue narrative projects, including Centre for Science and the Environment, the Panos-South-Asian Fellowship and the International Women’s Media Fund. She is currently working on a digital project to expand on her latest Walrus piece on the impact of surveillance on life in Akwesasne.

At Ryerson she is also working on several research projects, in addition to live journalism, she is working on a research project in partnership with Journalists for Human Rights on the impact of journalism training on marginalized communities, specifically remote and urban Indigenous communities in Ontario. She is also working with RSJ Associate Professor Asmaa Malik on a larger research project on diversity and the Canadian media.

She is the editor-in-chief of J-Source.

Sonya has lived and worked in many different places and environments. Geographically she has lived and worked in China, India, Pakistan, South Africa, the United States, Russia and Canada.