Dariya Tsyrenzhapova is a doctoral student at The University of Texas at Austin’s Moody College of Journalism and Mass Communication. Her research interests focus on public opinion polarization, Big Data, and computational science. She holds undergraduate and master’s degrees from the Missouri School of Journalism.
In 2018, as a Dow Jones Data Journalism Fellow, Tsyrenzhapova joined American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop to wrangle and analyze campaign finance data for The Accountability Project, a search engine of public data to hold the powerful to account. She also worked at NPR’s Investigations Desk in Washington, D.C.
Prior to that, Tsyrenzhapova was a reporter for the Columbia Missourian where she uncovered a web of sex offender registration laws months prior to a major legislative change allowing registrants to petition from a lifetime list. Her investigative series “Labeled for Life” was a finalist of a 2018 Investigative Reporters and Editors Award.
Tsyrenzhapova also spent five years working at the Open Society Foundations in Almaty, Kazakhstan. As a country manager for the Media Program, she worked on projects to support press freedom in a closing civic space and strengthen media professionalism. In 2013, she co-authored the Mapping Digital Media Report, addressing digital switchover practices colliding with state media monopoly and press freedom in the wake of Kazakhstan’s passage of its first broadcasting bill.