Eleanor Beardsley

Eleanor Beardsley began reporting from France for NPR in June 2004 as a freelance journalist, following all aspects of French society, politics, economics, culture and gastronomy. Since then, she has steadily worked her way to becoming an integral part of the NPR Europe reporting team.

Over the last year and a half, Beardsley has been an active part of NPR’s coverage of the two waves of terrorist attacks in Paris and the recent attacks in Brussels. She has also followed the migrant crisis, traveling to meet and report on arriving refugees in Hungary, Austria, Germany, Sweden and France. She has also travelled to Ukraine, including the flashpoint eastern city of Donetsk to report on the war there, and to Athens, to follow a crucial phase in the Greek debt crisis.

In 2011, Beardsley covered the first Arab Spring revolution in Tunisia, where she witnessed the overthrow of the autocratic President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Since then, she has returned to the North African country many times to follow its progress on the road to democracy.

In France, Beardsley covered both the 2007 and 2012 French presidential elections. She also reported on the riots in French suburbs in 2005 and the massive student demonstrations in 2006. Beardsley has followed the Tour de France cycling race and has been back to her old stomping ground — Kosovo — to report for NPR on three separate occasions.

As of April 2016