Silvia Dona

I was born in Uganda during the military dictatorship of Idi Amin Dada, to a Greek mother and an Italian father. My parents had met in Tripoli, fallen in love and sometime later, my father took a job in Kampala. He was to spend half his life in East Africa and so by great fortune, it became my home. I was schooled in Nairobi, Kenya so exposure to different cultures began at an early age. Left to roam and explore my surroundings I developed a love for adventure and the unexpected. Two character traits that have grown only more pronounced with age. I attended university in Italy settling for a degree in Translation Studies while dreaming of becoming a war photographer. My undergraduate dissertation on the Turkana was followed by a Ph.D. in Ethnolinguistics which took me to Tanzania amongst the Hadzabe people, a small tribe of hunter-gatherers. Whilst there I met the love of my life, left academia forever, started a family and since 2020 have been training and working as a documentary photographer. I have been primarily focusing on NGO work that deals with children's education although my interests are vast and include women's rights, environmental issues and poverty amongst others. Currently based out of Bangkok, I feel no place is too far or too remote to reach.