Noy Thrupkaew 

Type Investigations Fellow

Noy Thrupkaew is reporting fellow at Type Investigations focused on human rights and labor reporting, and director of the Ida B. Wells Fellowship program.

Noy previously worked as an independent journalist with a special focus on human trafficking and labor exploitation. As an Open Society Fellow, she investigated some of the largest human-trafficking cases in the U.S., and explored ways to develop greater accountability in law-enforcement initiatives against forced prostitution. She has reported from Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Iran, Morocco, and Cuba, writing for outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, National Geographic, The Boston Globe, Radio Netherlands, Reveal Radio, and Marie Claire.

A member of the University of British Columbia’s Hidden Costs of Global Supply Chains project, Noy is the recipient of International Reporting Project and Fulbright grants. In 2015, she taught a seminar on transnational investigative journalism at Princeton University and gave a TED talk on human trafficking. In 2017, she was the Greeley Scholar for Peace Studies at University of Massachusetts-Lowell. She is currently also a senior fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg Innovation Lab.

Highlights

2023 Gillen-Massey Award Recipients: The Hon. Kwami Adoboe-Herrera And Noy Thrupkaew

St. Thomas University’s John J. Brunetti Human Trafficking Academy awarded Noy Thrupkaew and Kwami Adoboe-Herrera with the 2023 Gillen-Massey Award.

Premiere Screening of “Tobacco Slave”

The premiere screening of award-winning director Roy Maconachie’s film Tobacco Slave was followed by a panel discussion between Maconachie and Noy Thrupkaew.

Paid media internships have come a long way — but have a long way to go

Even with a guaranteed paycheck, minority journalists face financial barriers that make internships inaccessible. Noy Thrupkaew interviewed for NBCU Academy.

Human trafficking is all around you. This is how it works

Behind the everyday bargains we all love — the $10 manicure, the unlimited shrimp buffet — is a hidden world of forced labor to keep those prices at rock bottom. Noy Thrupkaew investigates human trafficking – which flourishes in the US and Europe, as well as developing countries – and shows us the human faces behind the exploited labor that feeds global consumers.

Sri Yatun’s Escape

Every year, more than a thousand domestic workers are brought to the U.S. by diplomats and other foreign officials. What happens when those workers face abuse?

Host of Problems

What happens when au pairs encounter long hours, low pay, and abusive host families.

A Misguided Moral Crusade

Galvanized by public outrage and advocacy groups, policy makers have started to push to eradicate all prostitution, not just the trafficking of children into the sex trade.