Roopa Gogineni is a photographer and filmmaker based in Nairobi and Paris.

She grew up in West Virginia, but spent most summers in her family’s village in southern India. Roopa majored in African Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and received a masters degree, also in African Studies, from Oxford. Her research there looked at the construction of media narratives around Somalia. To be useful, she makes work to challenge these narratives and to acknowledge the complexity of histories and conflicts in the Global South.

Roopa speaks French, Spanish, and Telugu and gets by in Swahili and Arabic. She has completed first aid and hostile environment training.

2018 FRONTLINE/Firelight Investigative Journalism Fellowship

2018 Rory Peck Award for News Features

2018 One World Media Short Film Award
2018 Full Frame Jury Award for Best Short
2017 Firelight Media Short Film Grant 
2016 "Over There” Exhibition, Annex Gallery
2016 Exhibition at Women Deliver, Copenhagen
2015 One World Media Awards Short Film Nominee
2014 RISC Benefit Show, Aperture Gallery
2013 Look 3 Festival Scholarship
2012 Photo Lucida Critical Mass Finalist
2012 Ian Parry Scholarship Group Show
2012 Lucie Foundation Photo Mentorship Program
2012 "The Day I was Destroyed" Exhibition, Annex Gallery
2011 "Coal Colony" Exhibition, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford


roopa.gogineni@gmail.com