Jeevan Ravindran

BA Modern Languages (French and Spanish) 2016
Journalist

Jeevan Ravindran was raised between the suburbs of southeast London and the hill country of Sri Lanka, in an East meets West upbringing that shaped her Tamil identity. From an early age, she aspired to be a writer, a goal that took shape in the form of journalism with a focus on telling the stories of those affected by human rights violations.

At Keble, Jeevan earned a first-class degree in French and Spanish and chaired the student union’s homelessness campaign, On Your Doorstep. She worked with local rough sleepers, initiated a campaign to repeal the Vagrancy Act, and oversaw a Homelessness Awareness Week raising£1,500 for local charities.

It was at Keble that she also truly explored her love of drama, starring in a total of 11 theatre productions. Keble is also the ground for her one and only sporting achievement to date, playing and winning for Keble in an inter-college women’s football tournament (which she has a medal to prove)!

Since leaving university, Jeevan has worked as a multimedia freelance journalist in text and video, largely at Reuters and CNN, reporting on the Tamil community’s fight for genocide recognition in Sri Lanka, how climate change is affecting Canada’s indigenous communities, the surge in drugs-related violence in Marseille and the impact of the Grenfell Tower fire. She also researched, co-wrote and hosted a three-part podcast named “Less Than 2 Percent” for the global non-profit Chayn, investigating how the UK is failing survivors of sexual violence.

In 2021, she was awarded the Prix Européen du Jeune Reporter by the French NGO Reporters d’Espoirs for her French-language reporting on the homelessness crisis in Europe, and she also won Outstanding Young Journalist at the Asian Media Awards.

Currently, Jeevan is undertaking a stint in Sri Lanka as a freelance journalist, reporting on how the ongoing economic crisis is affecting the Tamil community in their search for justice following the civil war.