Nicola Kelly is an award-winning journalist and writer focused on UK immigration and asylum.
Her reporting regularly appears in The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, OpenDemocracy, Byline Times and elsewhere.
Before moving into journalism, Nicola was a diplomat, posted to Brussels and Istanbul, with stints in Beirut and Rome and secondments to the No 10 Press Office and the Home Office.
Her first book, ‘Anywhere But Here: How Britain’s Broken Asylum System Fails Us All’, will be published by Elliott & Thompson on 3 April 2025 and is available for pre-order through all major retailers.
Nicola’s reporting has been referenced in several legal challenges against Conservative Home Secretaries, as well as submissions and human rights reports. In October 2023, she gave evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee on the government’s failed Afghan resettlement schemes, which was drawn upon in the Afghanistan Withdrawal Inquiry and in questioning to Foreign Office Minister Lord Ahmad.
In 2024 she won the News Media Award at the Scottish Media Awards and she received a special mention at the One World Media Awards for International Journalist of the Year. Nicola also won Best News Story and Best Feature at the Freelance Journalism Awards the same year. In 2022, she was highly commended for Campaigning Journalist of the Year and shortlisted for Freelance Journalist of the Year at the Society of Editors Media Freedom Awards.
Nicola regularly features on the BBC, LBC and elsewhere as a media commentator on UK asylum issues, as well as panel discussions, podcasts, journalism conferences and guest lectures at universities across the UK. She is a mentor at the Refugee Journalism Project, a Fellow of the International Women’s Media Foundation and the European Journalism Fund and a member of both the Frontline Freelance Register and the NUJ.
She lives in South London with her husband and their rambunctious toddler.