As a broadcast journalism student and documentary filmmaker, Tess Martinelli ’24 knows her way around an on-camera interview. Still, it’s not every day that she gets to sit down with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad.

“Initially, the idea of interviewing her was a bit overwhelming,” Martinelli acknowledged. “But after meeting her, my nerves immediately settled. She’s so amicable and charming, with so many thoughtful insights.”

Since last summer, when Murad began a three-year appointment as Presidential Fellow in Peace Studies at Chapman University in Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, the global human rights advocate has been sharing her experience with Chapman students across the university. This spring, Martinelli and 18 classmates got to engage even more profoundly with Murad in the course “Unsung Stories and New Expressions: Making Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Visible.”

As the students explored the work of Nadia’s Initiative, which assists survivors and lifts communities out of crisis, they also broke into small groups to create four documentaries that support the initiative and the international cause of eliminating conflict-based sexual violence.

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