ABOUT

Hi! My name is Fiona Kelliher, and I’m an award-winning freelance investigative journalist based in London. I cover the human impacts of technology, global development and capitalism.

My current work focuses on cyberscamming and technology in East Africa and Southeast Asia. From 2024-2025, I completed a master’s degree at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where I wrote my dissertation on the transnational cyberscamming industry.

My recent stories have investigated the human trafficking pipeline from East Africa to Myanmar scam centers, analyzed the UN’s role in evictions and land loss in East Africa and Asia and uncovered the Cambodian Red Cross’s financial links to alleged cyberscammers, among others.

I was previously based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where I was an editor at VOD English—the hardest-hitting of Cambodia’s few independent newsrooms—until the government shut it down over our coverage. My Southeast Asia reporting has appeared in The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Nikkei Asia, Al Jazeera, Radio Free Asia, Rest of World and Coda Story, among others.

Before moving to Southeast Asia, I was a reporter at The Mercury News, a daily California newspaper. My 2021 investigation into a Covid-19 workplace outbreak law was reviewed by California's top workplace safety regulator and cited in a state Supreme Court case. I was part of a team that investigated how California's Covid-19 policies failed Latino communities, producing an award-winning series. My work has also earned California Journalism Awards for coverage of local government, explanatory reporting and in-depth reporting on separate occasions.

Past scoops have revealed drafts for draconian Cambodian cybersecurity, personal data and cybercrime laws, as well as investments in facial recognition technology. My 2022-2024 coverage of mass evictions at the Unesco heritage site Angkor Wat was cited in an Amnesty International report that was brought to the World Heritage Committee.

I’m also an avid tech policy reporter, obtaining little-known plans for Cambodia’s China-style firewall, examining how dictators’ online speech should be preserved and Meta’s approach to violent rhetoric on Facebook - as well as monks embracing TikTok.

I’m no longer on Twitter, but please contact me at fi.kelliher@proton.me.