{"id":5855,"date":"2026-04-30T14:50:56","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T14:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gng.org\/?p=5855"},"modified":"2026-05-01T17:28:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T17:28:49","slug":"alumni-spotlight-lauren-documentary-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gng.org\/ar\/2026\/04\/30\/alumni-spotlight-lauren-documentary-photography\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumni Spotlight: Lauren Miller, Crafting a Career in Documentary Photography"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLauren Miller\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h4>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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CCL intern coordinator<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Having a global community has always been important to me \u2013 I believe that to understand the world around us, we must actively engage in cross-cultural dialogue. My journey with Global Nomads amplified this belief and ultimately helped guide me toward a career in documentary photography.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

I began my time with Global Nomads in 2019 as an extern, where I had the opportunity to shadow fellow Grinnell College alum Sandra Stein, Global Nomads’ Chief of Programs and Learning. My first task was to backwards-map the Global Hunger curriculum. I stayed on as a Program Development intern to continue work on this module, and eventually became an Intern Coordinator at the outset of the Content Creation Lab (CCL). In this role, I collaborated with teams of interns to create youth-driven curricula on issues that mattered to them, including Human Rights, Women\u2019s Rights, Sports, and Mental Health.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Global Nomads structures its courses around dialogue and stories, which foster long-term engagement and increase accessibility. This philosophy has influenced my own approach as a storyteller. Behind the camera, I aim to document stories that are authentic, impactful, and accessible. I am particularly drawn to the mundane: the spaces and routines people often overlook, yet which, when made visible, can spark meaningful dialogue across diverse audiences.<\/span><\/p>

In March, I graduated with a Master\u2019s in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography from the London College of Communication at the University of the Arts London. For a degree that urges knowledge of global affairs, it felt essential to spend time outside of the United States, where I had grown up, and immerse myself in a new environment. London, as a multicultural hub, was a natural fit. The international nature of my course community both reflected and reinforced Global Nomads\u2019 core vision: that understanding and empathy, cultivated through cross-cultural peer dialogue, are central to a global education.<\/span><\/p>

My final MA project was more autobiographical than most of my other work, yet its personal lens \u2013 centered on self-portraiture \u2013 encouraged dialogue among individuals with both similar and vastly different experiences. <\/span>No Place Like<\/span><\/i> documents my return to the ten houses of my childhood and my encounters with the families who live in them now. Through these visits, I explore the uncanniness of reentering spaces I once called home, revealing the tension between memory and absence. As guest and ghost, I photograph myself in living rooms with the current occupants, and outside the houses, whether or not I was invited in. The series lingers in the unease of familiar yet distant, asking what it means to become a stranger in your own home \u2013 if you can still call it that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

A few photos from that project:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Having a global community has always been important to me \u2013 I believe that to understand the world around us, we must actively engage in cross-cultural dialogue. My journey with Global Nomads amplified this belief and ultimately helped guide me toward a career in documentary photography. I began my time with Global Nomads in 2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gng.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gng.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gng.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gng.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gng.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5855"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/gng.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5921,"href":"https:\/\/gng.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5855\/revisions\/5921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gng.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gng.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gng.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gng.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}