Arielle Emmett, Ph.D., is a writer, visual journalist and traveling scholar specializing in East Asia, science writing, and human interest. She is a recipient of a 2015 Fulbright grant to teach visual media and online journalism curriculum for the Universitas Padjadjaran, West Java, Indonesia. She received the U.S. Fulbright Scholar award in 2018-2019 to teach legal research and thesis writing at Strathmore University Law School, Nairobi, Kenya. Emmett also conducted a 10 month intensive study of Chinese Belt & Road initiatives in Kenya and their impact on labor, human rights, and the economy.
In 2013 Emmett taught online graduate journalism as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Journalism & Media Studies Centre, University of Hong Kong. After graduating with her Ph.D. at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism, she joined the faculty at Univ. of Colorado Denver in Beijing, teaching culture and communication at International College Beijing.
In summer 2015 Emmett is serving as Program Director of the new ‘Hip Hop Meets the Renaissance‘ program in Florence, Italy, part of IEIMedia, Inc., a private educational corporation providing students with cultural immersion and multimedia journalism each summer in select locations throughout Europe and Israel.
Emmett has been a professional journalist and teacher since beginning her career as a correspondent for Newsweek in the 1970s. Her articles have appeared in dozens of magazines and journals, including Caixin (Beijing), Boston Globe, Toronto Globe & Mail, Detroit Free Press, Philadelphia Inquirer, Ms., OMNI, Parents., Saturday Review, Computer World, Visual Communication Quarterly, and American Journalism Review, among many others.
After graduating with honors in pre-med and East Asian studies at the University of
Michigan, she was selected as The New York Times intern for columnist William Safire and spent a summer in Washington, D.C. researching and writing about medical ethics and Chinese politics. Dr. Emmett later studied at National Taiwan Normal University in Taiwan while serving as a Newsweek stringer. She became a columnist and contributor to Orientations, Asia Magazine, and East Asian News and Features. Later she went to New York as an editor for Science Digest. Ms. Emmett then became a reporter and full-time features staff writer for The Detroit Free Press.
After obtaining her Masters Degree at the University of Washington (Seattle, 1981), Ms. Emmett became a science and technology journalist. She has held senior editor and editor-in-chief positions at Computer Graphics World magazine, America’s Network, and Wireless Integration, and was a ten-year contributing editor at The Scientist (www.the-scientist.com). Ms. Emmett was a journalism professor at Temple University and an Associate Professor, adjunct faculty at Drexel University’s Department of Culture and Communications. An avid traveler and linguist, she also holds a third-degree black belt in Ryuku Kempo Karate. In 2004 she hiked the Vilcabamba mountains and The Inca Trail with her son, Emmett Arthur, and wrote a travelogue of their trip.
In March 2014 Arielle’s daughter Grainne and husband Jason welcomed Avery Harper Gray into the world, followed in 2015 with Avery’s sister, Autumn Gray. Her son Emmett Arthur, a clinical psychologist, and his wife Briana, welcomed Atticus, their son, in April 2022.
