The Pulitzer Center has granted a fellowship to Evan Harris, a junior at Wake Forest University. The $3,000 award will enable Harris to report on the effects of overtourism in Bali, Indonesia.
Harris, who is majoring in politics and international affairs and hails from Greensboro, plans to use various media forms such as writing, photography, and audio recording to capture the experiences of local business owners affected by the rise in tourism and development on the island.
“Last year, 6.3 million visited, outnumbering the island’s population of 4.4 million,” Harris noted in his application. “Bali’s tourism office projects 6.5 million will visit in 2025, challenging the current infrastructure in place.”
As an Indonesian-American who has visited Bali multiple times, Harris completed an ethnographic research project there in 2023 with funding from Wake Forest’s Richter Scholarship.
“I’ve seen changes caused by overtourism in real-time,” he said. “Each year, new developments crop up across heavily visited areas such as Ubud, Canggu and Seminyak, causing increased traffic congestion and the rapid degradation of rice paddies.”
Harris attributes his skills with 35mm photography to studio art professor John Pickel.
“Evan is an extraordinarily talented multimedia journalist – writing, photography, video – and has demonstrated those talents as photo editor of the Old Gold and Black (Wake Forest’s student newspaper),” stated journalism professor Justin Catanoso. “Evan is well-suited to report on the problems of overtourism in Bali… He intends to use his range of journalistic skills to tell the story in words, images and sounds.”
The Pulitzer Center supports quality journalism by raising awareness about underreported global issues through various media platforms and educational programs. Since 2012, Wake Forest University’s Journalism Program has been part of the Pulitzer Center’s Campus Consortium.
Upon completion, Harris’s work will be published on the Pulitzer Center website along with other fellows’ projects. This fellowship marks Wake Forest University’s thirteenth recipient.
