Maria Hengeveld is a Dutch Fulbright Fellow in Human Rights at Columbia University, where she researches the impact of race, class and gender on the lives and health of urban youth. As a researcher for Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Hengeveld conducts research on school-based mental-health providers in New York City and reports from citywide events on issues around youth, gender, mental health and racial justice. As a volunteer with the Rikers Island Education project, she works with incarcerated youth on social-enterprise education.
Hengeveld is a native of the Netherlands. Before moving to the United States, she spent four years in South Africa, where she studied sociology and gender studies at the University of Cape Town and worked in the fields of children's rights, media, gender justice and LGBT rights.
Hengeveld hopes to take her social-justice interests into the field of journalism after concluding her fellowship in May 2015.
