Valerie Hopkins is a multimedia journalist based in Prishtina, Kosovo with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN. Her reporting focuses on the Brussels-mediated dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia and EU policy in the region. She also is the managing editor of Prishtina Insight, an online magazine. Hopkins’ freelance work has appeared in Foreign Policy, Politico, the Guardian, Al Jazeera, Mother Jones, Newsweek and elsewhere. Hopkins started her journalism career in in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where her first job was reporting on trials before the Bosnian war crimes court. She later became the daily web editor for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Investigations she worked on were finalists for the Daniel Pearl Investigative Reporting Award and the Global Shining Light Award. Hopkins holds an M.A. in Journalism from Columbia University, where her thesis, about female war criminals from the Bosnian war won runner-up for best thesis. After graduating she was a 2013 Overseas Press Club Fellow, which sent her to Belgrade, Serbia as an intern with Thomson Reuters. Hopkins has a B.A. in International Relations from the College of William and Mary.
