Claudia Rosel is a Spanish photographer and documentary filmmaker focused on the intersections of migration, climate change, and culture. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Associated Press, El País, CTXT, Al Jazeera, UN News, the New Humanitarian and others.
With over six years of global experience, her storytelling spans East Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central America. She has reported on natural resource conflicts in Somalia and Ethiopia, migration crises in Greece and Mexico, and the exploitation of women and children in Kenya and Thailand. She has also worked in stories from the West Bank, New York City, Qatar, or South Africa.
Claudia spent five years in the humanitarian sector, primarily as Communications Coordinator for the UN Migration Agency (IOM) in Somalia, where she wrote articles, coordinated journalist field visits, and led the production and editing of all audiovisual content created by her team. She documented the impacts of drought, displacement, and trafficking across the region, and later supported IOM’s crisis response to the Taliban takeover, reporting from the US military base in Qatar on Afghan families awaiting U.S. resettlement.
In 2024, she shifted to independent work and earned an M.S. in Documentary Filmmaking from Columbia Journalism School in 2025, supported by a scholarship from Fundación La Caixa. She has since received two Pulitzer Center grants and an Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholar Fellowship, which brought her to the Associated Press bureau in Mexico, where she is currently based.
Claudia is the co-director, DP and editor of Revival, a short documentary on aging and the need for human connection, set to premiere in December 2025.
Trained to work in hostile environments and a certified PADI Advanced/Rescue Diver, Claudia brings a global lens to her work, grounded in a deep respect for local cultures and a commitment to holding power to account.
✉️ claudiaroselphoto [at] gmail (dot) com
Fellowships, Grants & Exhibitions
2025 Pulitzer Centre Crisis Reporting Grant (Columbia University)
2025 Pulitzer Centre Crisis Reporting Fellow (Campus Consortium)
2025 Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholar Fellow
2025 Exhibition Invisible Walls, Pulitzer Hall, Columbia University
2025 Flow Trip Photo Contest - Honorable Mention
2024 La Caixa Post-Graduate Fellow
2024 Bronx Documentary Centre Portfolio Review
2023 Eddie Adams Workshop - Tie Dye
2022 Exhibition Where Life Takes Us - Somaliland