News Corp announced today (Monday) the launch of a fellowship in honour of fallen The Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin.

The Marie Colvin Fellowship, sponsored by News Corp, will support a 10-week reporting assignment with The Wall Street Journal for a graduating senior in Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism in New York.

The first recipient of the award is Hanaa’ Tameez, 21, who will travel to Mexico City to work as an intern in the Journal’s bureau following her 2016 graduation.

News Corp chief HR officer Keisha Smith-Jeremie said:

We are so proud to sponsor this fellowship, named after a journalist who herself embodied the very best of this great and essential profession.

Support for a free press is one of the pillars of News Corp’s philanthropy, because we seek to protect and defend the ability of journalists to fulfil their vital function around the world.”

The Marie Colvin Fellowship honours the journalistic ideals of acclaimed international correspondent Colvin, who was killed in 2012 while covering the conflict in Syria for The Sunday Times.

During the time she worked at the title, Colvin covered stories around the globe from Chechnya to Sri Lanka to the Middle East.

Shortly after her tragic death, Stony Brook University, with the support of the Colvin family, established the Marie Colvin Centre for International Reporting to nurture and train the next generation of international reporters.

Colvin was a Long Island native, who grew up 30 miles from the university. She was known for her moving accounts of innocent civilians caught in the tide of war, and for her courage, tenacity and indefatigable commitment to truth.

Stony Brook School of Journalism dean Howard Schneider said:

We are dedicated to preserving Marie Colvin’s legacy and nurturing in the next generation of journalists the kind of tenacity and commitment to ground truth that Marie embodied. This award helps make that possible.”

Tameez, the inaugural recipient of the award, was a journalism and Spanish double major at Stony Brook University, and the former editor of the campus newspaper The Statesman. Tameez said she hopes to pursue a career in investigative reporting or documentary production. “I don’t think I could have asked for a better result after graduation,” she said.

In 2013 Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of News Corp, made a $50,000 gift to Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism to further the development of the Marie Colvin Centre for International Reporting through the News Corporation Foundation.

Mr Murdoch’s donation helped to expand the Marie Colvin Centre’s overseas reporting programme, Journalism Without Walls, which among other places has sent student journalists to Russia, Cuba, China, Kenya and Turkey.