Jo Chandler


Jo Chandler is an Australian journalist, science writer and educator. Her journalism has covered a wide range of subject areas, including science, the environment, women's and children's issues, and included assignments in Africa, the Australian outback, Antarctica, Afghanistan and Papua New Guinea. She is currently a lecturer at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Advancing Journalism and Honorary Fellow Deakin University in Victoria, Australia.
Chandler edited Best Australian Science Writing 2016 and is author of Feeling the Heat. She continues to work as a freelance journalist.

Career

In the industry for more than 30 years, Chandler started out on country newspapers, working as a cadet using a typewriter.
Chandler started with The Age newspaper in 1989; where she worked for much of her career, culminating in the role of Fairfax senior writer and roving national and international correspondent. As senior writer with The Age Chandler wrote in-depth reports and analysis of topics; with particular interests in humanitarian, women's issues, aid and development, Indigenous affairs and climate change.
Chandler's journalism has evolved and she has built on her skills and experience through a range of professional fellowships. She studied in the USA at the University of Missouri School of Journalism as a Rotary Scholar and travelled in 2006 to the UK on a Harry Brittain Fellowship for future senior editors with the Commonwealth Press Union and the British Foreign Office. She received two media fellowships with the Australian Antarctic Division, reporting from Casey Station and field research sites in 2007 and in 2009/10.
In 2005, after more than a decade in editing, she went back on the road as a reporter. She has filed news and features from assignments across Africa, Antarctica, Afghanistan, rural and remote Australia and Papua New Guinea earning numerous distinctions as an essayist, profile writer and narrative journalist, and is recognized across a range of specialty areas. Distinctions earned include the Walkley and Quill awards, the Bragg Prize for Science Writing, the George Munster Award for Independent Journalism and the ACFID Media award.
Chandler's work has been included in The Monthly, ''The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, ABC Radio National, Cosmos, Good Weekend, The Weekend Australian Magazine, Griffith Review, New Scientist, The Global Mail, BBC Online, and Undark among others. These stories include "It's 2013 And They're Burning Witches" and the personal "TB and Me".
Chandler edited Best Australian Science Writing 2016 and is author of Feeling the Heat''.

Personal life

Chandler lives in Melbourne and has two children.
Chandler is also a patient advocate for TB, having herself contracted drug resistant TB while working as a journalist in PNG.

Awards