Jack Shenker is a London-based journalist and author. His stories have won several awards and been translated into many languages.
Specialising in long-form reporting projects, Jack’s work explores the big political, economic and social forces that shape our lives – as well as how ordinary people and communities interact with those forces, and reshape them from below. His journalism often focuses on humans who are forced in some way to live on the margins, but whose stories reveal a lot about the way power operates at the centre: from outsourced cleaners sweeping the corridors of Westminster, to teenage revolutionaries facing down state violence in the Middle East, and migrants attempting to navigate the oceans that lie between.
He reports on technology, workers, inequality, climate change, crisis and resistance, and on places that have become entangled in messy borders, contested histories and competing struggles for the future. His investigations have been used by global campaign movements, cited in courtrooms and parliaments, and helped contribute to national and international policy changes.
Jack works across print, audio and film, both in the UK and around the world. As well as writing extensively for the Guardian newspaper, his journalism has also been published by a wide range of other media outlets including the New York Times, Granta, the London Review of Books and the BBC. His books are published by several imprints of Penguin Random House, and his literary agent is Karolina Sutton at CAA. To get in touch with Jack, please click here.
This website features only a small selection of Jack’s published writing and other projects. For more on his work, please continue scrolling below…
Work Highlights
UK
Jack has written several in-depth pieces analysing different dimensions of Britain’s ongoing political upheaval, including a major report on the remarkable Essex port town of Tilbury that was later adapted into a film for the BBC. His project exploring the treatment of people seeking asylum in the UK - particularly at privately-operated ‘refugee camps’ established on military land - was widely covered by other media outlets and used in support of successful legal actions taken by refugees against the government. In 2018, he was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for political journalism.
In 2020, his investigation into the death of an outsourced government cleaner during the Covid-19 pandemic generated extensive coverage, and was raised in parliament – forcing a government climb-down on the issue of coronavirus-related sick pay – as well as being recognised with a special commendation at the Paul Foot Awards. In the same year, he also won 'Politics and Society' writer of the year at the UK Freelance Writing Awards and was invited to give the annual keynote lecture at the Stuart Hall Foundation.
Jack has led a series of investigations for the Guardian into the growth of corporate control over cities, including the hidden privatisation of public space; as a consequence, several leading politicians spoke out on the issue and the Mayor of London announced plans to strengthen protections for public space. More recently, he has produced major print and audio stories on the politics of Covid conspiracies, the battle over narratives surrounding climate change, the modern history of the Home Office, and the UK’s first Amazon strikes.
Jack’s book, ‘Now We Have Your Attention: The New Politics of the People’ – a journey into the underside of Britain’s unrelenting political turmoil – was published by The Bodley Head and Vintage Books in 2019, with a paperback edition released in 2020. You can find more information about it here.
Egypt
Formerly Cairo correspondent for the Guardian, Jack’s wide-ranging coverage of Egypt’s revolution and counter-revolution in 2011 was recognised with the Amnesty International Gaby Rado award for excellence in human rights journalism. A full archive of his many news and comment articles from Egypt is available on the Guardian’s website here.
Other major works from Egypt include Cairo Divided – produced in collaboration with the photographer Jason Larkin, and released as a standalone publication in both English and Arabic – and long-reads for Granta and the London Review of Books on the dystopian transformation of Egypt’s capital under the present military dictatorship. More recently, he has written an essay for Vice to mark the tenth anniversary of Egypt’s anti-Mubarak uprising, and a long-form story for the Economist’s 1843 Magazine about the drama that unfolded when the family of one of Egypt’s most famous political prisoners decided to publicly face down the regime at a high-profile United Nations summit in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Jack’s book, ‘The Egyptians: A Radical Story’ was published by Allen Lane and Penguin Books in 2016. It was released in paperback in 2017 and a US version was published by The New Press in the same year; there is more information about it here.
Elsewhere
Jack’s interrogation of ecological disaster and the rise of separatist nationalism in the central Asian republic of Karakalpakstan won the 2011 Foreign Press Association award for Environment Story of the Year. In 2012 his investigation into the deaths of African migrants in the Mediterranean – whose cries for help were apparently ignored by European military units – led to the development of new protocols by the Council of Europe. It was awarded news story of the year at the One World media awards, where he was also shortlisted for journalist of the year.
In 2016, Jack’s long read on Bir Tawil, the last ‘unclaimed’ territory on earth, won the Foreign Press Association award for Travel Story of the Year. 'Platinum' – Jack's collaboration with photographer Jason Larkin exploring the notorious Marikana mineworkers massacre and its disputed memory both within South Africa and beyond, published as a standalone book and bilingual English/Xhosa newspaper – was shortlisted for the inaugural Photo-Text award at Arles.
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Main homepage photo by Titi Texidor III