The facts live on the homepage. These are the stories.
Twenty years of running toward the story
Joseph Hammond’s career began at ringside — a boxing writer who learned early that access is earned in person. The instinct never changed; only the arenas did. In 2011 it put him in Cairo for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as the Arab Spring remade the Middle East. In 2013 he travelled through M23-held North Kivu in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, reporting from Bunagana, Rutshuru and Kiwanja during the rebellion’s final months. Read the original report in The Caravan →
His reporting has taken him to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Iraq, Egypt, Somalia, Ghana, Malawi, Saudi Arabia and beyond. In 2022 he reported from north-central Burkina Faso with the Volunteers for the Defense of the Fatherland, documenting how Christian, Muslim and animist fighters confronted a widening jihadist insurgency. Read the Burkina Faso report →
Hammond is a former Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellow with the government of Malawi (2014–15). His other fellowships include the Penn Kemble Democracy Forum at the National Endowment for Democracy, the African Union’s iDove program, where he serves as Europe Co-Chair, and an Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders cohort in Rabat. The Pulitzer Center also supported his reporting on religion and public life in the United States.
Read GQ South Africa’s profile of Joseph Hammond at COP28 →
His interviews span Nobel Peace Prize laureates, sitting heads of state, and cultural figures including Naomi Campbell and Tony Hawk. And always, boxing: Hammond has covered championship fights on three continents — including Fury–Usyk in Riyadh in 2024, the first undisputed heavyweight title fight in 24 years — and interviewed Julio César Chávez, Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Shane Mosley, Gennady Golovkin, Oscar De La Hoya and Bernard Hopkins. He also served as Sports Illustrated’s first cricket and rugby editor.
The founder chapter
In 2025 Hammond co-founded the Creative Economy Forum with Taiwo Meghoma, convening its inaugural edition at Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, Italy, and its second in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2026. As Founder & Co-President (Strategic Partnerships), he helps build a platform where arts meet global leadership and where fashion, film, media and the creative industries meet trade and investment.
Off the record
A native of Long Beach, California, Hammond holds a master’s degree in Middle East and African history from California State University, Long Beach, and is an alumnus and research associate of the Centre for Islamic and West Asian Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. He speaks enough Spanish and Arabic to discuss boxing — which, he’ll tell you, is the only test of fluency that matters.