Robert Nickelsberg grew up in New Jersey and graduated in 1972 from the University of Vermont. In 1981, he moved to El Salvador and began a 4-year stay covering Central America as a contract photographer for Time Magazine. Nickelsberg moved to South East Asia in 1986 and New Delhi, India in 1988. Nickelsberg has extensively documented the insurgency in India's Kashmir, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Hindu nationalism in India. Nickelsberg relocated to the U.S. in 1999. He continues to document the social changes and on-going effects of terrorism and insurgencies in South Asia and the Middle East. In 2007, Nickelsberg was awarded a research grant from the South Asia Journalists Association and the Dart Foundation for a study on trauma after 20 years of insurgency in Kashmir, India.