Our Fellows

Leon McCarron is a writer whose words come from slow, immersive journeys. He has travelled over 30,000 miles on foot and by bike and boat, and tells stories big and small through the voices of those on the ground. He has been a Fellow of the Abraham Path since 2017, and is also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He has presented two films for the BBC, and his journalism has appeared in National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New Scientist and Noema. He is the author of ‘The Land Beyond: A Thousand Miles on foot through the Heart of the Middle East’ and his upcoming book, ‘Wounded Tigris: A River Journey through the Cradle of Civilisation’ will be published in late 2022.

Since 2017, Leon has been exploring the ancient pathways and trails in the Kurdistan region of Iraq where he now lives. “Working in this region brings great promise and hope to a place and people that have suffered greatly, and are keen to open to a brighter path for the future,” says Leon. “Our footsteps there follow centuries of other walkers that have sculpted these landscapes.”

I have been a freelance photographer for over 15 years. My fascination for people, the inequality in the world and my strong belief that people are in essence all the same, made me change careers in my late twenties. Having been a bartender and an avid globetrotter, I then started working for magazines and businesses as a freelance photographer.

I finally ended up capturing the work of NGO’s and foundations, while creating personal projects in which I capture the dynamics of  every-day life in different countries, cultures and communities. What started out as a change of careers has developed more and more into a lifestyle in which I travel the world studying, framing and documenting my own outlook on the world around me. I often share my work on Instagram.

I am a freelance journalist, editor and researcher, and made my way to journalism via conflict studies. I completed a bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences in Maastricht and graduated from King’s College London with an MA in Nonproliferation and International Security.

I am interested in conflict and the ways in which it shapes history and politics, marks our landscapes and (un)ties us to geography, and becomes entrenched in our thinking about the world and in the human psyche. I have written and/or produced stories on resource wars, conservation, the refugee crisis in Europe and the worldwide arms trade. I spend a lot of time in the newsroom of the Dutch national newspaper NRC. You can also find me on Twitter.