JRF announces journalist fellowship winners

The fellowships, which run for up to two years, will enable the winners to write books designed to increase public understanding of a chosen area of social policy and to influence future developments.

Polly Ghazi is a former Environment and Whitehall Correspondent of The Observer whose recent freelance work has appeared in The Guardian, Daily Express and Sunday Times. She is also the co-author of Downshifting: The Guide to Happier, Simpler Living which has sold around 35,000 copies. Her JRF fellowship project is a book on the 24-hour, 7-days-a-week - “24/7” - society and its impact on flexible working and family life.

Jeremy Laurence is Health Editor of The Independent, and was previously health specialist at The Times, The Sunday Correspondent and The Sunday Times. He was winner in 1997 of the British Medical Association’s Medical Journalist of the Year award. His book - which will be his first - has the working title Care or control: the challenge for mental health care in the 21st century.

In addition to the two fellowships, the Foundation has made a supplementary award to Robert Taylor, Employment Editor of the Financial Times. This will enable him to produce a book about the Labour Government’s ‘New Deal’ employment policies.

Sir Peter Barclay, Chairman of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation who also chaired the judging panel, said: “These award winners were chosen from a competitive field of more than 40 applicants. We are delighted to be supporting three highly promising book projects by writers with distinguished track records in journalism.”