8 • 9 • 10 November | Online & Around the World 

GSDF Labs is a series of free events, designed to support filmmakers and video journalists who are developing short documentary projects, and featuring experts and filmmakers sharing practical tips and insights.

Day 2 of GSDF Labs: Solutions Lab will take place online and in selected locations around the world. Please check event locations and times below, as each country has their own schedule of events for the day.

 

* To enable participants from neighbouring cities to attend the in-person workshops, we have a limited amount of travel grants available for each location. Please FILL IN THIS FORM to be considered for a travel grant.

Day 2: Solutions Lab | Wed 9 November

Session 1: Solutions Journalism for Visual Storytelling

Have you thought of producing a solutions focused short doc? Stories that highlight people responding to social problems can shift our perspective. They can also shine a light on what we could do elsewhere in the world. Five trainers from five regions will run an in-depth session covering the main pillars of solution oriented reporting, and how these principles can be applied to visual storytelling.

Session 2: Bring your short doc | Documentary Development Workshop

Bring your short documentary idea to discuss with other filmmakers, facilitated by experienced filmmakers. Get feedback from peers and mentors on how to develop your project before you pitch it for funding or commissioning, and explore how to have a more solutions oriented approach in your storytelling.

Session 3: Short Docs Screening | Towards Solutions

If you’ve wondered how to cover responses to a social problem, there’s a range of approaches you could take. Solutions stories can be told with different reporting and storytelling styles, while also making a good short film. Join us in watching documentaries from across the world, exploring what works, what doesn’t, how could we make it better. Find out how to tell your story in your own voice.

Bogotá, Colombia

All times are local to Bogotá, Colombia, UTC-5

10am | Solutions Journalism for Visual Storytelling | Latin America

Online | 2.5 hours | Zoom

4:30pm | Workshop: Bring your short doc

In person | 2 hours | Mamifera, Bogotá

6pm | Refreshments

7pm | Short Docs Screening: Towards Solutions 

In person | 2 hours | Mamifera, Bogotá

FACILITATORS

Maria Claudia Davila

Trainer

Lali Houghton

Filmmaker, Journalist

Sarajevo, Bosnia

All times are local to Sarajevo, Bosnia, UTC+1

1pm | Solutions Journalism for Visual Storytelling | Europe

Online | 2.5 hours | Zoom

5pm | Workshop: Bring your short doc

In person | 1.5 hours | HomeWork HUB, Sarajevo

6:30pm | Refreshments

7pm | Short Docs Screening: Towards Solutions 

In person | 2 hours | HomeWork HUB, Sarajevo

FACILITATORS

Jeremy Druker

Trainer

Anida Sokol

Facilitator

Nejra Hulusić

Filmmaker

Delivered in partnership with Mediacentar Sarajevo and Transitions.

Lagos, Nigeria

All times are local to Lagos, Nigeria, UTC+1

10am | Solutions Journalism for Visual Storytelling | Africa

Online | 2.5 hours | Zoom

2:30pm | Workshop: Bring your short doc

In person | 1.5 hours | The Zone, Lagos

4pm | Refreshments

5pm | Short Docs Screening | Towards Solutions 

In person | 2 hours | The Zone, Lagos

FACILITATORS

Chibuike Alagboso

Trainer

Simpa Samson

Filmmaker

Cairo, Egypt

All times are local to Cairo, Egypt, UTC+2.

12pm | Solutions Journalism for Visual Storytelling | MENA

Online | 2.5 hours | Zoom

5pm | Workshop: Bring your short doc

In person | 2 hours | American University, New Campus, Cairo

6:30pm | Refreshments

7pm | Short Docs Screening: Towards Solutions

In person | 2 hours | American University, New Campus, Cairo

FACILITATORS

Dina Aboughazala

Trainer

Adam Makary

Facilitator

Toka Omar Qassem

Facilitator

Delivered in partnership with EGAB

Manila, Philippines

All times are local to Manila, The Philippines, UTC+8

10am | Solutions Journalism for Visual Storytelling | Asia

Online |  2.5 hours | Zoom

5pm | Workshop: Bring your short doc

In person | 2 hours | The Astbury, Manila

6:30pm | Refreshments

7pm | Short Docs Screening: Towards Solutions 

In person | 2 hours | The Astbury, Manila

FACILITATORS

Portia Ladrido

Trainer

Baby Ruth Villarama

Filmmaker

Delivered in partnership with Inkline

Sue Turton

Sue Turton has been a TV reporter for 27 years, and has now diversified into documentaries and writing. She covered conflict for Al Jazeera in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Egypt where she and her colleagues were convicted on terrorism charges. Sue began at Sky News, and after reporting for ITV and GMTV she moved to Channel 4 for 12 years, winning two RTS awards.

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Victoria Bridges

Victoria Bridges was founding Executive Director of GlobalGirl Media UK, a London-based charity which empowers young women in digital media and journalism skills. Formerly a freelance documentary filmmaker, she has credits from all the major UK channels. Besides her work with GlobalGirl Media UK, Victoria also works as a communications consultant and video facilitator in the non-profit sector. 

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Gemma Bradshaw

Gemma is the director of One World Media and is responsible for the growth and success of One World Media’s programmes, particularly focused on supporting new talent covering global stories. She is passionate about the power of media to open minds and create space for conversation and change. Before joining One World Media, Gemma was working in the US documentary film industry. Most recently as Director of Programs for the Social Impact Media Awards (SIMA), and prior to that as COO of San Francisco Green Film Festival.

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Gethin Chamberlain

Gethin Chamberlain is a freelance photojournalist specialising in human rights investigations. He covered South Asia for The Observer from 2008 to 2014 and was previously a foreign correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph and The Scotsman’s chief reporter. Now based in Scotland, he works as a freelance reporter and photographer for a range of international publications. His Brides of the Sun collaboration, revealing the impact of climate change on rates of child marriage, was published in the UK, Europe, Australia and the US. 

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Rosamund Pearce

Rosamund is a multimedia journalist for Carbon Brief, a UK-based website covering the latest developments in climate change. Her job includes making maps, data visualisations, animations, interactives and infographics. Her work has been picked up by a number of other publications, including the Guardian, the Independent, Vox, the Sydney Morning Herald and Scientific American. Prior to joining Carbon Brief, Rosamund completed an MSc in Science Communication at Imperial College London, and has worked for the Science Museum and the Wellcome Trust.

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Tom Clarke

Tom leads all specialist science and environment coverage for ITV News, providing original journalism and detailed analysis of complex scientific thinking and environmental issues. He was previously Science Editor at Channel 4 News and nominated by the prestigious Royal Television Society Journalism Awards for his investigative work on Tamiflu

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Fiona Harvey

Fiona Harvey is an award-winning environment journalist for the Guardian. Prior to this, she worked for the Financial Times for more than a decade. She has reported on every major environmental issue, from as far afield as the Arctic and the Amazon, and her wide range of interviewees include Ban Ki-moon, Tony Blair, Al Gore and Jeff Immelt.

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Karl Mathiesen

Karl Mathiesen is the editor of Climate Home News. He was previously a freelance reporter and an environment columnist for the Guardian. He comes from Tasmania, Australia, where he was a keeper at a sanctuary for injured wildlife and threatened wildlife.

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Craig Hunter

Craig Hunter has been part of the BBC’s Factual Commissioning team for more than 4 years and he is currently the Lead Commissioning Editor for Natural History and Specialist Factual. Craig works across the full range of Specialist Factual subjects for all BBC Channels, including ‘Inside the Factory’, ‘Twinstitute’, ‘How to stay Young, ‘What’s the right diet for you?’. In Natural History Craig has commissioned big single subject films, for BBC ONE: Drowning in Plastics, as well as LIVE Natural History: Big Blue Live / Wild Alaska Live and formatted shows like Animals with Cameras. He is also the lead commissioner for Factual in Scotland.

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Nicky Milne

Nicky Milne is Head of Documentaries at Thomson Reuters Foundation, , the philanthropic wing of Reuters global news network who specialise in under-reported stories world-wide. She films/photographs across the globe, executive produces and develops the small multi-media team, as well as commissioning and overseeing a range of freelance shoots around the world. Prior to TRF, she worked as head of film/photo at a global NGO, Christian Aid, and has many years’ experience in TV production.

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Phil Harding

Phil Harding is a journalist, broadcaster and media consultant. Previously he was an award-winning producer, editor and senior executive at the BBC where he did a number of high profile jobs. Among other jobs, he was in charge of the BBC’s Editorial Policy overseeing the Corporation’s most difficult ethical editorial dilemmas.  He was also editor of the influential Today programme and in charge of the news and English language output on the World Service.   

In recent years he has worked as a consultant and executive coach with various international media groups and senior leaders.

He has written a lot recently about truth, trust and fake news. He has just written a book chapter about the regulation of social media companies and is chairing a Media Society event on this subject later this week.  

He also facilitates and chairs conferences and events. He is a regular chair and interviewer at the Edinburgh International  Book festival. 

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Alex Kirby

Alex Kirby is a former BBC journalist. He was acting Cairo bureau chief in 1986, then environment correspondent for BBC Radio and TV News, and latterly for the BBC News website, from 1987 to 2005. In 2013, with three former colleagues, he launched the Climate News Network. He was named environment journalist of the year at the UK regional press awards in 2017.

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Sam Sutaria

Sam is the Head of Strategy and one of the founding team of WaterBear: the first interactive streaming platform dedicated to the future of our planet. Sam leads the commercial strategy and business development of the network and production studio, and in just the last year has spearheaded partnerships with the New York Times, UN Foundation, Natura &Co, Nikon Europe, MAVA Foundation, Jack Wolfskin and more. Sam is also the host of WaterBear’s talk show: “The Bear Hug” and oversees the nonprofit arm of the group: the Resilient Foundation. Prior to WaterBear, Sam led the The European Nature Trust (TENT), produced at Nice and Serious and trained with the BBC Natural History Unit. He is also the Founder of social enterprise DrawFor, and a Trustee of the Barnes Film Festival and the Hartswood Trust.

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Samir Shah (Chair)

Samir Shah is the Chief Executive and Creative Director of Juniper, an independent television and radio production company.

Samir was awarded a CBE in the 2019 Birthday Honours list for services to Television and Heritage. He  has worked in broadcasting for over forty years.  Since 1998, Samir has been CEO and owner of Juniper which specialises in television and radio factual programmes from current affairs to dramatised documentaries for a range of broadcasters including the BBC, C4 and Nat Geo.  Before Juniper, Samir was head of current affairs television at the BBC and, later, responsible for the BBC’s political journalism across radio and television. Samir’s career started at the London Weekend Television in 1979.

In June 2014 Samir was made Chair of The Geffrye,  Museum of the Home, a position he currently holds.  From 2005 to 2014, he was a Trustee, then Deputy Chair, of the V&A. Samir was a Non-Executive Director on the BBC Board between 2007 and 2010. He is a former Chair of the Runnymede Trust (1999 to 2009) and is a Trustee of Reprieve.  He was former Chair of Screen West Midlands (2008-201). From 2004-2007, Samir was a Trustee of the Medical Foundation for the Victims of Torture.

Samir was awarded an OBE in 2000 New Year’s Honours list, elected a Fellow of the Royal Television Society in 2002 and, in 2019,  was appointed  Visiting Professor of Creative Media, Oxford University  (Faculty of English).  In August 2006 Samir was appointed a Special Professor in Post Conflict Studies in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Nottingham.

Samir was born In India and came to England in 1960. He was educated at Latymer Upper School in London, read Geography and Maths at the University of Hull and has a DPhil from St Catherine’s College, Oxford.

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Cora Bauer

Cora Bauer is Media and PR Manager at Amnesty International UK, overseeing media outputs for Amnesty’s global priority campaigns and UK immigration and migrant rights policy. She also leads on UK media outputs relating to Europe, South America, Central America, the Caribbean and Oceania. Most recently she has led on the organisation’s coronavirus reporting. Cora has worked in the not-for-profit sector for more than a decade from domestic health charities to international development and human rights organisations.

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Collins Boakye-Agyemang

Collins Boakye-Agyemang provides expert advice to Senior Management, Heads of WHO Country Offices and Communication and Health Information Officers across the African Region. He contributes to the overall strategic direction and visibility of the WHO African Region. Collins has worked in communications in Africa and the UK for over twenty years.

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Marie Helly

Marie is head of the BBC’s global anti-misinformation project ‘Beyond Fake News’.   This came into operation in 2018 when the World Service started to see that the scourge of “fake news” was becoming a threat to health, wellbeing and democracy in regions across the world and needed to be challenged head on. In the past two years there have been conferences and events across India, Nigeria, Kenya, Serbia, Brazil as well as the UK. The BBC now has a dedicated anti-disinformation unit and fact checkers filing for BBC Reality Check across the globe.

Marie is a graduate of LSE.  She joined the BBC language services in 1986 and has worked as a journalist, both in domestic news and global output, producing specialist environmental programmes, business output, consumer affairs, investigations as well as live news and current affairs stories.

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David Ajikobi

David joined Africa Check as Nigeria editor in November 2016. He has more than a decade of experience across different media platforms. He was one of the pioneer News Editors/Producers at 99.3 Nigeria Info, 96.9 Cool FM and 95.1 Wazobia FM in Lagos. Earlier in his career, he was metro editor at NEXT Newspaper published by African-born Pulitzer Prize winner, Dele Olojede. David has a masters degree in media and communications from the Pan Atlantic University, Lagos.

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H R Venkatesh

H R Venkatesh is the founder of Media Buddhi, a media literacy initiative he runs at BOOM, a fact-checking organization in India. He has focused on fighting misinformation since 2016 with his own startup, and a stint with the International Center for Journalists as a fellow. In 2018 and 2019, he was a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University. Venkatesh is a former founding editor at The Quint and Senior Anchor at CNN-IBN, a role he held for 9 years. He is from Bangalore, India and lives in New Delhi.

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Laura Garcia

Laura heads First Draft’s training and education across newsrooms and journalism schools. Her work as a multimedia journalist started back in her home, Mexico, as a photographer for a newspaper. She also worked for newspapers and film production companies in the US before coming to the UK in September 2011. Laura has worked in different newsrooms across the UK: ITV Meridian, BBC South East, BBC Radio Kent, NBC News, R4’s The World Tonight and Channel 5 News. Previously she worked as a Lecturer in Television and Multimedia Journalism at the University of Kent, and produced a weekly politics show for KMTV. She is passionate about access into journalism and diversifying the media and co-founded PressPad and the UK chapter of AMMPE World.

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Dr. Courtney Radsch

Courtney C. Radsch, PhD, is advocacy director at the Committee to Protect Journalists. She serves as chief spokesperson on global press freedom issues for the organization and oversees CPJ’s engagement with the United Nations, the Internet Governance Forum, and other multilateral institutions as well as CPJ’s campaigns on behalf of journalists killed and imprisoned for their work. As a veteran journalist, researcher, and free expression advocate, she frequently writes and speaks about the intersection of media, technology, and human rights. Prior to joining CPJ, Radsch worked for UNESCO, edited the flagship publication “World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development,” and managed the Global Freedom of Expression Campaign at Freedom House. She has worked as a journalist in the United States and Middle East with Al-Arabiya, the Daily Star, and The New York Times.

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Danish Raza

Danish is a multimedia journalist with over 13 years of experience spanning some of India’s largest broadcast, digital and print newsrooms. Most recently, he was the South Asia Editor at VICE World News. Danish has travelled across the length and breadth of India to produce ground-breaking stories on identity politics, social justice, human rights, trafficking and slavery. He has reported form conflict zones including the Maoist infested pockets in central India and the No Man’s Land along the India-Bangladesh border.

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Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC

Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC is a leading human rights lawyer with Doughty Street Chambers. Caoilfhionn has particular expertise in freedom of expression and open justice. She regularly advises and acts for newspapers and broadcasters in the UK concerning journalistic access to the courts and public interest reporting. She worked with the Media Lawyers’ Association and the Chief Coroner in the development of new guidelines on open justice in the coroners’ courts. 

She also regularly acts for journalists worldwide who are imprisoned, prosecuted, sued or subjected to travel bans due to their journalism; her current and recent case load includes work for journalists, bloggers, cartoonists, peaceful protestors and human rights defenders in Egypt, Turkey and Equatorial Guinea. She leads the international legal team for the family of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the award-winning journalist assassinated in Malta in 2017, and she is leading counsel to 152 BBC Persian journalists persecuted by Iran due to their work. She is a member of the UK Advisory Board to Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and regularly works with Index on Censorship and other NGOs specialising in freedom of expression.

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Leandro Demori

Leandro is one of Brazil’s leading investigative journalists. His trajectory is nationally recognized because of his courage and innovation, whether leading editorial departments like “Revista Piaui”, or in his actual function as the executive editor of The Intercept Brasil. Demori is also the author of the book that tells the story of Tommaso Buscetta, a member of Cosa Nostra, an Italian mafia. The book revealed unpublished documents and is the result of years of research. In 2019, Demori was responsible for leading the work at The Intercept Brasil and also the journalism consortium that was built to investigate the irregularities of Car Wash Operation, the most important Brazilian anti-corruption operation. This work exposed the corruption in the heart of Brazil’s judiciary, and for that reason it has exposed Demori to risks and threats from the far-right Brazilian government.

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Lubna Masarwa

Lubna is the Jerusalem bureau chief for Middle East Eye, which she has worked for since it was established in 2014. Masarwa is responsible for coordinating journalists based on the ground in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and Jerusalem, deciding how best to report events from the region. In 2020 Shatha Hammad, one of the team working from the West Bank, won the prestigious One World Media New Voice Award. Masarwa, who is herself Palestinian, has also covered stories herself including the recent elections in Israel and the Lions Gate uprising in East Jerusalem in 2017. Before joining MEE, Masarwa worked at the Alquds University in Jerusalem as a community organiser; also coordinated visits by British lawmakers and journalists to Israel Palestine.

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Athandiwe Saba

Athandiwe is a multi-award-winning journalist who is passionate about data, human interest issues, governance and everything that isn’t on social media. She is an author, an avid reader and trying to find the answer to the perfect balance between investigative journalism, online audiences and the decline in newspaper sales. It’s a rough world and a rewarding profession.

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Julie Noon

Julie is an acclaimed investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker with 20 years’ experience in crafting compelling and impactful storytelling through documentary, still images and creative narrative. Her career spans current affairs documentaries, news, politics, observational documentaries and live political programming. Julie has worked, lived and travelled in over 60 countries around the world, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, to South Sudan and Afghanistan.

Julie has produced, directed and series produced on award-winning series and critically acclaimed strands including Channel 4’s Dispatches and Unreported World, and the BBC’s This World. Her work has been nominated and shortlisted for awards including the Rory Peck Award for Impact and Broadcast Award’s Best Current Affairs Documentary. Many of her films have been shown in Parliament and some have prompted policy and legal change. Passionate about developing new talent in foreign affairs, Julie also runs courses for organisations including One World Media, and teaches on Hostile Environment training courses.

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Catherine Norris-Trent

Catherine is a senior reporter with the French international news channel, France24 and winner of the One World Media Refugee Reporting Award 2020. Catherine has previously worked for BBC Newsnight and ITV before she moved to Paris. She has interviewed Gaddafi, covered the revolution in Libya and reported on breaking stories such as the election of Donal Trump and the Arab Spring uprisings.

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Zain

Zain is a young person from Pakistan seeking asylum. He recently completed a Degree in Philosophy and Global Studies and achieved a First Class honours. Zain works with the Red Cross’s Voices Network and  campaigns for the rights of refugees and people seeking asylum. He has first-hand experience of the injustice of the UK judicial system and the obstacles asylum seekers and refugees go through. Zain campaigns for access to higher education, the right to employment and to raise awareness of the psychosocial impact of the asylum process. 

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Mishal Husain

Mishal’s BBC career began in 1998 as a producer and she became one of the main presenters on BBC World News, spending time based in Singapore and Washington as well as presenting live on location from around the world.  Mishal has presented four critically-acclaimed BBC single documentaries and series: Malala – Shot for Going to School; How Facebook Changed the World – the Arab Spring; a three-part series on the life of Mahatma Gandhi; and Britain & Europe – The Immigration Question, broadcast in the days before the EU referendum vote.

In January 2016 she was named by the Sunday Times as one of the 500 most influential people in Britain; in 2015 she was Broadcaster of the Year at the London Press Club Awards and Presenter of the Year at the Women in Film and TV Awards.

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Pasca Lane

Pasca is Director of Media at the British Red Cross. She heads up a communications team which aims to bear witness to the challenges faced by people in crisis around the world, including refugee and asylum seekers. Pasca has 14 years’ experience developing communications campaigns for charities, public health initiatives and leading brands.

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Harriet Grant

Harriet Grant is a writer and reporter specialising in human rights stories. She has been writing regularly for the Guardian about migration, slavery and social affairs for nearly ten years and before that worked as a broadcast journalist and producer at the BBC. Harriet has reported from Calais, Italy and Glasgow on the human face of the global refugee crisis and has a particular interest in EU asylum policy.

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Irving Huerta

Irving is a member of CONNECTAS’ Editorial Board and an academic. He has worked for media and investigative organisations like AristeguiNoticias.com and Forensic Architecture. He holds a PhD in Politics from Goldsmiths University and is a regular trainer and course developer for the Centre of Investigative Journalism in the UK.

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Tim Singleton

Tim is head of International News at Sky. He has overseen coverage of the US elections; the war in Tigray and shocking evidence there of sexual abuse; the mass Covid outbreak in India; and the recent events in Afghanistan. Prior to this, he was Director of Communications at the Department for International Development, and Deputy Editor and Director of Newsgathering at ITV News, directing award-winning coverage on a range of international stories including the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010. He also covered the conflicts in Kosovo and Iraq.

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Heba Aly

A multimedia journalist by training, Heba spent one decade reporting from conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia before moving into management. Her work for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Christian Science Monitor, Bloomberg News and The New Humanitarian, among others, took her to places like Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chad and Libya; and she received a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting for her work in northern Sudan.

Heba has worked with The New Humanitarian in different capacities since 2007, including as field correspondent and Middle East Editor, and played a key role in planning and executing IRIN’s spin-off from the United Nations to become an independent media organisation. Her recent TEDx Talk – “Stop Eating Junk News” – drives home the importance of responsible journalism from crisis zones. She is a regular commentator on humanitarian policy in her published work, in governmental briefings and at conferences around the world. She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Humanitarian System and, in 2018, was named one of 100 Young Global Leaders under 40. She was also named one of the 100 Most Influential Africans of 2018 by New African magazine. Heba speaks English, French, Arabic and Spanish.

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Anna Doble

Anna is digital editor at BBC World Service where she leads on podcast, video and social media strategy. She is developing the BBC’s presence in digital audio markets around the world and has pioneered digital communities around podcasts, including hit shows Death in Ice Valley, 13 Minutes to the Moon and North Korean hacking thriller, The Lazarus Heist. She is the “digital doctor” on the World Service listener feedback show, Over to You.

Anna previously ran the digital news team at Radio 1, where she created a social video strategy for youth audiences. Before that, she was head of online at Channel 4 News where she won a series of digital innovation awards. 

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Alison Gee

Alison is editor of People Fixing the World, which specialises in solutions journalism. The strand features innovative solutions that are solving problems around the globe. She leads a team making digital video, radio and podcasts covering a huge range of subjects: a man who regrew a patch of rainforest, a scheme to find careers for ex-criminals, a helpline for men who commit domestic abuse, specialised training to stop police misconduct and a spacesuit that’s been adapted to save women’s lives in childbirth.

She’s about to join the popular BBC Newscast podcast. In the past, she’s worked on the BBC News website on video and text features, and she’s also presented and edited news and business programmes for the BBC World Service.

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Vivenne Francis

Vivienne is the director of the Refugee Journalism Project an initiative that she established in 2016 to support displaced and exiled media workers to re-connected with their careers in the UK. Through workshops, mentoring and collaborative work, the project focuses on helping the group to become better networked, updating their skills and finding freelance and job opportunities.

Vivienne is also a Reader and Senior Lecturer in Social Justice Journalism and Knowledge Exchange at London College of Communication, part of the University of Arts London. Prior to joining academia, Vivienne worked as a producer with the BBC and as a print journalist. Her journalistic work has focused on issues such as deaths in custody, inequalities in the education system and miscarriages of justice.  

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Harriet Oliver

Harriet is responsible for creating and commissioning news content for young global audiences. She edits two current affairs programmes for teenagers in Africa and a digital news service for young people globally. Her team of reporters put the experiences of young people at the heart of their journalism and experiment with innovative story-telling techniques to engage young audiences.

Prior to joining the World Service, Harriet worked for the BBC News Channel and 5 Live Radio.

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David Hearst

David is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He is a commentator and speaker on the region and analyst on Saudi Arabia. He was The Guardian’s foreign leader writer and was a correspondent in Russia, Europe, and Belfast. He joined the Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was an education correspondent.

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Dr Dalia Fahmy

Dr Fahmy is Associate Professor of Political Science at Long Island University. She is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Policy in Washington DC, and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights and UNESCO Chair at Rutgers University for 2018.

Dr Fahmy has published several articles in academic journals focusing on democratization and most recently on the effects of Islamophobia on US foreign policy. She has given several briefings on the future of democracy in the Middle East. She has been interviewed by and written editorials in various media outlets including ABC, CBS, CBC, CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, the Huffington Post, the Immanent Frame, the Washington Post, and appears often on Al Jazeera. She has presented her research in various venues including Columbia, Georgetown, Harvard, Princeton, UCLA, The Middle East Institute, The Asia Society, The World Bank, The Wilson Center and The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy.

Dr Fahmy has won several academic awards and fellowships for her research. In 2014, Dr. Fahmy was one of the recipients of the prestigious Kleigman Prize in Political Science, was the 2016 recipient of the Newton Prize for Excellence in Teaching, and in 2017 was named NPR’s “Source of the Week”.

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Bex Gilbert

Bex Gilbert is Head of News at the British Red Cross, managing the charity’s talented and busy media team. A former journalist with more than a decade’s experience across news, features and documentaries for newspapers and TV, she’s been a member of the Red Cross media team for the past 13 years. Over that time she’s worked on everything from the Haiti earthquake to the Grenfell Tower Fire and across all areas of the Red Cross’s work helping people in crisis in the UK and overseas.

Human interest storytelling has always been at the heart of her work and over the years she’s learned a lot about the importance of creating safe and empowering ways for people to tell their own stories in their own way and in their own words. As someone who’s been on both sides of the fence, as a journalist working to tight deadlines, and a press officer negotiating access to storytellers, she understands the pressures of both. Bex hopes this event will build understanding and share best practices on how to work with people who have experienced trauma, so their complex, emotive and compelling stories can move audiences to a greater level of understanding and prompt positive change.

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Dania Akkad

Dania Akkad is a senior investigations editor at Middle East Eye, focused on human rights, courts, energy and technology. She started her journalism career in daily newspapers in California, covering courts and crime and then agriculture, and worked in Syria as a freelance reporter before the war. She studied Middle East politics at SOAS.

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Osama Gaweesh

Osama Gaweesh is Editor In Chief, Egypt Watch. Egypt Watch is an independent advocacy and research platform.

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Maha Hussaini

In August 2014, Maha Hussaini was appointed as the Gaza-based media officer for the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med Monitor), based in Geneva. Two years later, she was appointed regional office director, a position she held until December 2018. Aside from being a contributor for Middle East Eye, Maha works as an executive director for the London-based think-tank ImpACT International for Human Rights Policies. She continues to work with Euro-Med Monitor, serving as a board trustee and member of the board of directors, as well as a supervisor for HuMedia, its media platform.

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Wale Lawal

Wale Lawal is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Republic, a digital subscription publication for the Africa-curious. He is an experienced media professional and an ex-KPMG management consultant. Wale was recently named to the Reuters Next list of global thought leaders, the 2021 Forbes Africa 30 under 30 list, and appeared in 2019 on the Quartz list of top 30 African innovators. He was educated at the University of Bath, the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford, where he studied technology, politics and economic development in Africa and graduated top of his class. An expert on Nigeria and African affairs, Wale’s work has featured in Quartz, the Financial Times, the New York Times, Reuters, New York Magazine and at the Venice Biennale. Wale has been writing the Yoruba Futures Exhibit at the forthcoming Randle Museum in Lagos.

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Moky Makura

Moky Makura was born in Nigeria, educated in England and has lived in London, Johannesburg and Lagos. She is the Executive Director of Africa No Filter, a donor collaborative focused on shifting the African narrative. Prior to that, she was the Deputy Director for Communications Africa at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where she was responsible for building and managing the foundation’s reputation on the continent. In 2017 she took on an interim role as the foundation’s Country Representative to South Africa responsible for government relations and internal program coordination. Before joining the Gates Foundation, Moky worked as Communications Director for the Tony Elumelu Foundation in Nigeria. Prior to that, she was a well-known TV presenter, producer, author, publisher and a successful entrepreneur in her own right.

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Jo Healey

Jo Healey was a senior broadcast news journalist with BBC TV. She introduced Trauma Reporting training to BBC News and Current Affairs and factual programming. She is the author of Trauma Reporting, A Journalist’s Guide to Covering Sensitive Stories. She trains journalists and media staff all over the world on how best to work with victims, survivors and vulnerable interviewees. Her Trauma Reporting training is survivor-focused, with lived insight from people who spoke to reporters at tough emotional times.

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Amanda Burrell

Amanda is a multiple award-winning documentary producer and presenter. She believes that the environmental crisis is the most newsworthy and consequential issue of our times. Inspired by stories of positive environmental action, Amanda creates films that focus on the fight to heal the planet and stories of the people engaged in it. For the past five years, she has been working between London and Qatar as the executive producer for Al Jazeera English’s flagship award-winning environmental series, Earthrise. She was instrumental in the launch of Planet SOS, the channel’s series about the climate and ecological crisis, which she presented from the studio.

As a self-shooting PD and reporter, she has climbed vertical crevasses using crampons to obtain footage from the top of a 5,400m glacier in Peru, traipsed knee-deep in rubbish in a landfill in Sao Paolo, interviewed heroin dealers in north London alongside veteran broadcaster Rageh Omaar, and reported solo from Bhutan on the plight of displaced Lhotshampa refugees. In an especially personal piece for the Al Jazeera Correspondent series, she underwent the process of mature oocyte cryopreservation – freezing her eggs – while presenting to camera. Other productions include Harem: Sultanate of Women for Channel 4, plus Stick Thin in India and Women in Black: Yemen for the BBC.

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Darshna Soni

Darshna Soni is a Home Affairs Correspondent at Channel 4 News, covering issues including policing, immigration, crime and politics. In a 20 year career, she has covered some of the biggest stories of our times, including terror attacks, the war in Syria, Brexit and the migrant crisis. She has recently reported on the plight of refugees fleeing Afghanistan. Previous to this, Darshna worked for the UK’s first elected Black MP, the late Bernie Grant in Tottenham.

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Nadja Drost

Nadja Drost is an award-winning journalist, based in New York, who won this year’s One World Media Refugee Reporting award, sponsored by the British Red Cross. For her winning article, ‘When Can We Really Rest’ written for the California Sunday Magazine, she accompanied migrants from around the globe as they crossed the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama, one of the most dangerous migration journeys in the world, to reach the U.S. Her article on the Darien Gap was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, and a television series she reported on the Darien Gap for the PBS NewsHour was honoured with an Emmy and Peabody Award.

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Philippa Nuttall

Philippa Nuttall is Editor in Chief Environment and Sustainability at the New Statesman. She was previously Editor in Chief at Energy Monitor and FORESIGHT Climate and Energy. She has covered environmental issues as a journalist and communications expert for nearly 20 years from London, Paris and Brussels, where she has lived for the past 12 years. She has degrees from the University of Cambridge and La Sorbonne.

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Osama Gaweesh

Osama Gaweesh is Founder and Editor-in-Chief at Egypt Watch. He is a refugee in the UK, a well-known journalist and TV presenter in Egypt and the Middle East. He made his name as a broadcast journalist with a series of high-profile leaks of secret recordings of Sisi. He has worked as a reporter at Journalism.co.uk and hosts a daily political talk show on Al-Hiwar TV in London. He has written for the Guardian, Newsweek, Media Diversity Institute, HotTopics.htl, and Middle East Monitor.

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Mohamed Hassan

Mohamed Hassan is an award-winning journalist, writer and broadcaster covering the MENA region for Middle East Eye. In 2017 he was awarded the Gold Trophy at the New York Radio Awards for his RNZ podcast series ‘Public Enemy’.

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Maha Hussaini

Maha Hussaini is an award-winning journalist and human rights activist based in Gaza. Maha started her journalism career by covering Israel’s military campaign on the Gaza Strip in July 2014. In 2020, she won the prestigious Martin Adler Prize for her work as a freelance journalist.

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Shatha Hammad

Shatha is a Palestinian freelance journalist. In June 2020, she won the New Voice award at the One World Media Awards for her reporting from the West Bank. Hammad was born, lives and works in the occupied West Bank, where she faces the daily dangers and obstructions of the Israeli military occupation.

Hammad has been detained at Israeli army checkpoints, covered violent military crackdowns and routinely has her movement and work impeded. Through all this, she continues to produce groundbreaking reporting that leads the world’s coverage.

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Lubna Masarwa

Lubna is the Jerusalem bureau chief for Middle East Eye, which she has worked for since it was established in 2014. Masarwa is responsible for coordinating journalists based on the ground in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and Jerusalem, deciding how best to report events from the region. In 2020, Shatha Hammad, one of the team working from the West Bank, won the prestigious One World Media New Voice Award.

Masarwa, who is Palestinian, has covered stories including the recent elections in Israel and the Lions Gate uprising in East Jerusalem in 2017. Before joining MEE, Masarwa worked at the Alquds University in Jerusalem as a community organiser as well as coordinated visits by British lawmakers and journalists to Israel and Palestine.

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Aziza Nofal

Aziza Nofal, an investigative journalist from Nablus, lives and works in Ramallah as a freelance reporter for Arab and regional websites. She graduated in 2000 from the Department of Media and Journalism at Al-Najah National University and received her master’s degree in Israeli studies in 2014 from Al-Quds University. She also works in cooperation with the Amman-based Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ). 

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David Hearst

David Hearst is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He is a commentator and speaker on the region and an analyst on Saudi Arabia. He was The Guardian’s foreign leader writer and was correspondent in Russia, Europe and Belfast. He joined the Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.

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Diana Buttu

Diana Buttu is a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and a former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization. She is best known for her work as a legal adviser and a participant in peace negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian organisations and has since been associated with Stanford University, Harvard University and the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU).

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Mustafa Barghuoti

Mustafa Barghuoti is the leader and founder of the Palestinian National Initiative and an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative council since 2006. Barghouti came second to Abbas in the Palestinian presidential elections of 2005. He is also a civil society and democracy activist and a member of the central council of the PLO.

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Sami Abu Shehadeh

Sami Abu Shehadeh is a member of the Joint List representing the Arab nationalist Balad. In January 2021, he was elected party chairman during primaries, succeeding Mtanes Shehadeh. Abu Shehadeh was first elected to the Knesset in October 2019 and was previously Director of the Yaffa Youth Movement. Prior to this, he was a member of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa City Council. He is a historian.

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Nevine Mabro

Nevine Mabro is a commissioning editor for Channel 4 having previously worked as Head of Foreign News for Channel 4 News. From Syria, Somalia to South America, Nevine’s work has been awarded a raft of coveted accolades during her tenure, including two International Emmys for news coverage, a BAFTA and countless RTS Awards. She led the programme’s Aleppo coverage with Syrian filmmaker, Wa’ad al-Kateab, which garnered international acclaim, amassing more than 400 million views online alone.

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Amanda Coakley

Amanda Coakley is an award winning central Europe correspondent and a Europe’s Futures Fellow at the IWM in Vienna. She has reported for The Irish Times, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, TIME, The Independent, The Telegraph, POLITICO Europe, The Financial Times, VICE, New Humanist, Al Jazeera, Euronews, The National, Deutsche Welle, BBC Radio 4, RTÉ, CNN International, LBC Radio, Times Radio, and Channel 4 News.

Before her move to Budapest, she was a roving reporter and covered the Venezuelan migration crisis, Pakistan’s general election in 2018, the war in Nagorno-Karabakh and the humanitarian crisis in Burkina Faso. As a producer, she has worked extensively with Channel 4 News in London. Her work on the coronavirus pandemic with the programme was awarded ‘Coronavirus Journalism Excellence’ by Press Gazette in July 2020.

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Dickens Olewe

Dickens Olewe is a Kenyan journalist working for the BBC and an alumni of the John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University. His interest is in using new technology for storytelling and integrating the public in the news reporting process. He has been a speaker at several journalism conferences around the world on topics including constructive journalism, drones for news, podcasting and user-centred design thinking. He also runs The Dickens Olewe podcast, where he interviews guests on media, politics and technology in Africa.

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Faisal Edroos

Faisal Edroos is Senior Editor at Middle East Eye. He worked for Al Jazeera English between 2010-2019 covering Yemen, the GCC and the wider Middle East. His work focuses on war and conflict, social movements and counter-terrorism.

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Sondos Shalaby

Sondos Shalaby is a journalist and news editor at Middle East Eye in London. Her work is focused on human rights and public policy in the Middle East and North Africa. She has a Master of Journalism and Mass Communication from the American University in Cairo and a Master of Public Policy from Oxford University.

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Peter Oborne

Peter Oborne won best commentary/blogging in 2022 and 2017 and was named freelancer of the year in 2016 at the Drum Online Media Awards for articles he wrote for Middle East Eye. He was also named as British Press Awards Columnist of the Year in 2013. He resigned as chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph in 2015. His latest book, The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism, was published in February 2021 and was a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller. His previous books include The Triumph of the Political Class, The Rise of Political Lying and Why the West is Wrong about Nuclear Iran. 

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Rebecca Henschke

Rebecca Henschke is the BBC World Service Asia production hub editor. She is an award winning journalist who has covered the diverse region of South East Asia for two decades. Previously the BBC’s Indonesia correspondent and later an editor based in Jakarta, she moved to London in 2019 to set up and lead the BBC’s World Service Asia production hub.   Working with a team of brave Burmese journalists she has produced a series of investigations and documentaries revealing to the world what’s happening in Myanmar following the military coup in February 2021.

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Mohammed Najib

Mohammed Najib is a journalist, war correspondent and defence analyst based in Ramallah, Palestine. He reports and writes on the Middle East region for leading newspapers and journals like The Jerusalem Post, Yomiuri Shimbon, Le Monde, Special Operations Report, the Wall Street Journal and Jane’s Information Group.

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Tim Singleton

Tim is head of international news at Sky. He has overseen coverage of the US elections, the war in Tigray and evidence there of sexual abuse, the mass Covid outbreak in India and recent events in Afghanistan. Prior to this, he was Director of Communications at the Department for International Development and Deputy Editor and Director of Newsgathering at ITV News, directing award-winning coverage on a range of international stories, including the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010. He has also covered the conflicts in Kosovo and Iraq.

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Pavol Szalai

Pavol Szalai is the head of the European Union/Balkans Desk at Reporters Without Borders, RSF. Prior to joining RSF in Paris, Pavol had eight years of experience as an editor and journalist. Between 2016 and 2020, he worked as an editor for energy and environment in the pan-European media network EURACTIV, contributing from its Slovak newsroom. While based in Paris, he was the energy correspondent for the magazine Europolitics (today Contexte) in 2014. In 2008–2010, he covered European affairs in Slovakia’s major daily, SME.

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Samir Shah

Samir Shah is the Chair of the Board of Trustees at One World Media and Chief Executive and Creative Director of Juniper, an independent television and radio production company which specialises in television and radio factual programmes from current affairs to dramatised documentaries for a range of broadcasters including the BBC, C4 and Nat Geo. Before Juniper, Samir was head of current affairs television at the BBC and, later, responsible for the BBC’s political journalism across radio and television. 

Samir was awarded a CBE in the 2019 Birthday Honours list for services to Television and Heritage and more recently received the Outstanding Contribution Award at the RTS Television Journalism Awards 2022.  

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Jakub Górnicki

Jakub Górnicki started Outriders to bridge cultures and societies with  original reporting and to provide a global perspective through innovative storytelling. He also started Code for Poland and transformed it into Code for All together with Code for America. He is passionate about new media, interactive storytelling and reporting projects. 

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Zofia Pregowska

Zofia graduated in film directing from Warsaw Film School. In 2015, she made her production debut with “A Brave Bunch: Uprising Through Children’s Eyes” by Tomasz Stankiewicz. Zofia is a Grantee of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage of Poland Culture online with her travel blog Photosontheyway.com, which started from covering lockdown in Greece and continues to tell short stories about her experiences travelling in a 28-year-old van with Tomasz Stankiewicz. She artistically collaborates with Tomasz Stankiewicz to do short projects for non profits, cultural organisations and Polish theatres. 

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Tomasz Stankiewicz

Tomasz Stankiewicz is a film director, cinematographer, and screenwriter whose work focuses on creative documentary films telling real stories using various forms of storytelling. Before film, Tomasz worked for many years as a web designer. Tomasz created “Maharaja’s Children. Brave bunch in India” a multimedia project that uses film, animation and internet design as an interactive document. “Maharaja’s children” premiered at Slamdance Film Festival in the US and was longlisted in the One World Media Awards 2022. 

Tomasz also directed an award- winning documentary “Brave bunch. Uprising Through Children’s Eyes”, an anti-war production full of magical realism telling the story of the Warsaw Uprising 1944. 

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Sahera Dirbas

Sahera Dirbas is an independent filmmaker, freelance producer,and supervisor. She has produced news and documentaries for international TV channels such as the BBC and Rai. She is also a researcher of Palestinian oral history. 

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Nadim Nashif

Nadim Nashif is a social entrepreneur and digital rights defender as well as a senior policy analyst for Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. He is also the founder and executive director of 7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, a Palestinian digital rights organisation. For the past 20 years, he has worked on community development issues.

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Sandrine Rigaud

Sandrine Rigaud is an investigative journalist. As editor of Forbidden Stories since 2019, she coordinated the “Pegasus Project” published in July 2021 and the “Cartel Project,” a massive cross-border collaboration to finish the investigations of a murdered Mexican journalist that won a George Polk Award and the Maria Moors Cabot Prize.

Before joining Forbidden Stories, she directed feature length documentaries for French television. Her films have been shortlisted or awarded in multiple festivals, including DIG, Europa, Fipadoc, FIGRA, SeoulEco. She has reported from Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Lebanon, Qatar and Bangladesh.

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Sameer Qumsiyeh

Sameer Qumsiyeh is a Palestinian filmmaker based in Ramallah. He directed, produced, filmed and edited several award winning narrative, short and documentary films. His documentary feature “Walled Citizen” had its international premiere at the 32nd Galway Film Fleadh and was selected for the International Competition at the 40th Kendal Mountain Festival. It won the {Stories of the Invisible Youth Award} at Terra di Tutti Film Festival. His short “Quarantine, Curfew and Videotapes” was labelled “Short Film Market Picks” at Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival 2021.

Sameer is the editor of the two award winning feature films by Palestinian director Muayad Alayan: “Love, Theft and Other Entanglements” (Berlinale 2015) and “The Reports on Sarah and Saleem” (IFFR 2018).

In 2020 he started creating online videos that explore topics such as global citizenship, life in Palestine and mental health. Apart from his life in film, Sameer is a devoted backpacker who believes in the power of international travel as a way for cultural understanding and building bridges between people.

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Latifeh Abdellatif

Latifeh Abdellatif is a Palestinian journalist from Jerusalem who has worked in media for more than 10 years. She has produced and presented local shows, including “As if you were in Jerusalem”, “Jerusalemite chats” and most recently, “Society and Latifa”, which boldly discussed sensitive social topics.

She has also worked as a photographer and videographer for several local and international media organisations, including Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye and Untold Palestine. Recently, she has focused her work as a producer of short films for production houses and international groups, such as the Red Cross and UNFPA.

 
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Mohamed Hashem

Mohamed Hashem is a Senior Producer at Middle East Eye. Previously, he worked for Al Jazeera English and Arabic where he focused on the Middle East. Hashem is a graduate of King’s College in Halifax, Canada, from which he holds a combined Honours degree in journalism and political science.

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Mohammed Alatar

Mohammed Alatar is one of the major documentary directors of Palestinian cinema. His training as a filmmaker took place during the 90s in the USA. He defines himself as a filmmaker and human rights activist, with deep commitment to films that matter, human rights and people’s struggle. He uses his work to promote his ideas and convictions all around the world, giving scope to the causes and the human values that he defends. In 2002, he was nominated for the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanity Award for his films.

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Runako Celina

Runako Celina is an investigative journalist at BBC Eye Investigations & the co-founder of Black Livity China, an award-winning media platform which documents the experiences of Africans and people of African descent in China and in relation to China. She holds an MA in Investigative Journalism from City University & an MA in International Politics and African Studies from Peking University.

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Sheida Kiran

Sheida Kiran is a British-Turkish documentary filmmaker and musician based in London. She conducted research on women and migration during her BSc Social Sciences studies at UCL, and completed her MA in Documentary Film at LCC. Driven by her passion for ethnographic storytelling, her most recent work focuses on women in agriculture and their rights to land ownership. Her latest documentary Harvesting Turkey’s Tea was commissioned by BBC Our World at GSDF 2021 and broadcast globally. It has since been nominated for a OWM Award, and shortlisted for the Student BAFTA Awards. She is currently developing and researching documentaries for BBC’s TV Current Affairs.

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Marta Miskaryan

Marta Miskaryan is a documentary filmmaker, photographer and writer of Armenian origin. Based in London, she works as a Digital Content Producer for the National Theater, and develops her independent projects. Her short about the National Museum fire in Rio de Janeiro was nominated in the Best Documentary category at the FIC RIO festival. Her latest film ROT54: Armenia’s Forgotten Space Giant documents the revival of an abandoned scientific heritage site in Armenia. It was commissioned by AJE Witness at GSDF 2020, and broadcast in October 2022.

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Mélanie Gouby

Mélanie Gouby is a French investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker based in London. She has produced & directed short documentaries for The Guardian, NBC Left Field and Vice among others. Always seeking to let underrepresented communities and the story they want to tell guide her process, Mélanie has documented the diamond trade in the Central African Republic, pangolins trafficking in Cameroon, reported on the political crisis in Burundi, traveled with khat smugglers in Djibouti, and been smuggled herself behind army lines by activists in Sri Lanka. Her latest short documentary The Essence of Memories has been commissioned at GSDF by ARTE France and CBC Canada, as a co-production.

 

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Prashun Mazumdar

Prashun Mazumdar is a Delhi-based independent filmmaker and journalist. He has produced and co-directed long-form documentaries and news features for international broadcasters such as Al Jazeera, France 24, BBC, Netflix and ABC News. A graduate of Delhi University, he has also contributed to pieces in The Telegraph (Kolkata), The Indian Express, USA Today, Le Monde and Los Angeles Times. His work deals with themes of human rights, personal journeys, culture and politics. Prasun took part in GSDF 2020 with his short documentary India’s Covid Warriors, co-directed by Suyash Shrivastava. The film was broadcast on Al Jazeera 101 East, and was shortlisted for OWM New Award 2022.

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Dina Aboughazala

Dina Aboughazala is an Egyptian media entrepreneur and a bilingual journalist, who spent 14 years working for the BBC before launching her media startup Egab in August 2020. Egab empowers local journalists from the Middle East and Africa to publish stories in regional and international media outlets that challenge stereotypes and dominant narratives about their communities. Egab specialises in solutions journalism; a genre focused on reporting how people respond to problems in their communities. Dina holds an MA in Interactive Journalism from City, University of London, and gives talks and training sessions on solutions journalism and diversity and inclusion in the media.

Dina is running the Solutions Journalism training for MENA.

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Chibuike Alagboso

Chibuike is a Health Journalist at Nigeria Health Watch, a health communication and advocacy organization based in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. His writing focuses on highlighting efforts that are tackling public health challenges in Nigeria. He also writes thought leadership articles that provide insights to health sector actors in Nigeria and supports the Nigeria side of the Solutions Journalism Africa Initiative as Program Manager.

Chibuike is running the Solutions Journalism training for the Sub-Saharan Africa Hub.

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Maria Claudia Davila

María is a Social Communicator from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá with five years of experience, and interest in the journalistic, audiovisual field and in innovation on story telling. She currently works as a web editor and journalist for Radionica, a public cultural radio station in Colombia. She is a fellow for the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) of the Emerging Media Leaders program, where she collaborated for the LA Times and LA Times en Español. She was also part of the network of trainers in Latin America of the Solutions Journalism Network, giving workshops on this approach to 30 Colombian journalists. She was selected by the Earth Journalism Network to investigate coastal resilience issues in the island of San Andres after Hurricane Iota. Before this, GRID-Arendal selected her to investigate the panorama of women threatened in Colombia for performing in leadership roles and protecting the environment against fracking. She has worked for Mutante and VICE Colombia as a journalist and reporter. She also collaborated with media outlets such as PACIFISTA, Manifesta, La Revista Bienestar and El Espectador. Her main thematic interests focus on gender, mental health, environment, human rights and culture.

María is running the Solutions Journalism training for the Latin America Hub.

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Jeremy Druker

Jeremy Druker is the executive director of Transitions (TOL), one of Central and Eastern Europe’s leading media development organizations, and editor in chief of TOL’s flagship publication, Transitions, which focuses on solutions journalism in CEE. He has led dozens of workshops on solutions journalism across Central and Eastern Europe and co-authored an online course on solutions journalism. He is also founder/CEO of Press Start, the first global crowdfunding platform designed specifically to support journalists in countries where the press cannot report freely. Jeremy is a former chairman of the board of the Fulbright Commission in the Czech Republic and a member of the supervisory board of the Czech Journalism Prizes, the “Czech Pulitzers.” Jeremy has been an Ashoka Fellow since 2010. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he now lives in Prague, which he has called home for more than 25 years.

Jeremy is running the Solutions Journalism training for the Europe Hub.

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Portia Ladrido

Portia Ladrido is a Solutions Journalism Network-accredited trainer from the Philippines. She is also Co-Founder of INKLINE, a media platform based in Oxford, UK, that specializes in solutions-focused stories. She has led solutions journalism workshops for WAN-IFRA and the Indonesia Association for Media Development, particularly for reporters based in the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Timor Leste, among others. Previously, she was an editor at CNN Philippines Life, the digital features arm of CNN Philippines. During her time at CNN, she was awarded the Human Rights Journalism Fellowship by the Philippine Human Rights Information Center for her coverage of social issues. She holds a Master’s Degree in International Journalism from Cardiff University, UK.

Portia is running the Solutions Journalism training for the Asia Hub. 

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Lali Houghton

Lali (Nairobi, 1980) is a British-Peruvian independent filmmaker and investigative journalist, currently based in Bogota, who specialises in observational documentaries for international networks such as the BBC, Discovery, Al Jazeera, Channel 4, Netflix and Vice News. An Al-Jazeera Witness regular contributor, his Dead Woman’s Pass that follows a female porter on the infamous Inca trail won awards at Palm Spring, Austin and Havana. In 2018, he was a Rory Peck finalist for Smuggling Dreams, a documentary that portrays the life of a young father and fisherman who enters the smuggling trade on the east coast of Venezuela. In 2014, Lali spent 8 months filming First Contact: Last Tribe of the Amazon for Channel 4 UK and Netflix, which follows the plight of two tribes coming out of isolation in the border lands of Peru and Brazil. The documentary won an RTS (Royal Television Society) Award for science and natural history program in the UK. During the pandemic he contributed for the film Convergence soon out on Netflix.

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Anida Sokol

Anida Sokol is a media researcher and trainer from Mediacentar Sarajevo and the deputy editor of the online magazine focused on journalism Media.ba. Anida Sokol is a media literacy and solutions journalism trainer and has worked as a lecturer on Politics and the Media and Political Communication at the STTT and Burch University in Sarajevo. She was one of the participants of train-the-trainers program for Europe of the Solution Journalism Network. She is the author of various research studies on the media in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Western Balkan region, including on regulation of harmful content online, media consumption habits of young people and media trust, propaganda, disinformation and hate models in the media. She is currently heading a research project on harmful narratives during the General Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She holds a PhD from the Faculty of Political Science, Sapienza University Rome.

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Nejra Hulusić

Nejra Latić Hulusić is a film and TV director from Sarajevo. Born in Sarajevo, she graduated from the directing department of Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo. As a director and a producer Nejra was awarded a “Balkan Discoveries Award 2011” for her documentary Undercovered, codirected with Sabrina Begović Ćorić (SFF, ZagrebDox, Cottbus FF). In 2011, she directed a documentary film, Her Cinema Love which has been screened on the most important documentary film festivals such as Hotdocs, Visions du Reel, Dok Leipzig, Dokufest and ZagrebDox. In 2018. Nejra won HBO best pitching Award at ZagrebDoxPro. In 2020. her documentary film, Ćafir won the BHFF Jury Award for best documentary and the audience award for best picture.

As a director, Nejra Latić Hulusić is known for films like Svjedok (2008), Her Cinema Love (2011), In To The Blue (2014), Undercovered (2017) and Ćafir (2020). She is currently employed as a television director doing broadcasts and TV documentaries for BHRT (From Darkness To Eternal Light, Čovjek Je Čovjeku Vučko, Memories About Memories And A Road To Rememberance). Her latest directing project is BH’s first fiction web series for youth, The Mocers (Pdrugljivci). Beside her directing works, she writes weekly columns for “Lola”, the magazine from Banja Luka and the Al Jazeera Balkans Blog.

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Adam Makary

Adam Makary is an Egyptian-American journalist and filmmaker. He received his BA in Political Science from the American University in Cairo and later went on to work as a print journalist for Egypt’s first independent English newspaper. Later as a news producer, he covered the lead up to, and aftermath of the “Arab Spring” for Al Jazeera English, CNN, ABC and Channel Four. With AJE, he was the first producer to cover the protests in Egypt on January 25, 2011 which led to the ouster of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. His work during the Arab Spring helped Al Jazeera English receive several awards including the Royal Television Society Channel of the Year, the Peabody award for “enterprising and brave coverage” of the Arab Awakening, as well as the Columbia Journalism Award. Adam recently completed his MFA in Film & TV production from the University of Southern California and currently teaches Storytelling at the American University. He holds the title of Editorial Director with Egab, a solution based journalism platform that trains journalists in Africa and the MENA region.

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Baby Ruth Villarama

Baby Ruth is involved in international co-productions championing Asian documentaries. She’s a Chevening Scholar where she won the British Council’s Global Social Impact Award for generating conversations and call to action on modern-day issues such as slavery and migration through her films, leading to the creation of a dedicated ministry for overseas workers in the Philippines. She’s a co-founder of Voyage Film Studios, Filipino Documentary Society; a board member of the Directors Guild of the Philippines pushing the best global Filipino stories to reach more audience.

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Toka Omar Qassem

Toka Omar Qassem is an Egyptian freelance constructive multimedia journalist, documentary filmmaker, and post-producer working with Egab, DW’s Eco Africa, and BBC’s People Fixing the world, among other regional and international media entities. She is also working as a teaching assistant at the American University in Cairo and has a Master’s degree in TV and Digital Journalism from the same institution. She is a DW constructive journalism fellow, and her work focuses on individuals’ efforts for positive change and the challenges that come with big dreams. She usually works as a one-person crew and considers each story a new adventure.

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Simpa Samson

Simpa Samson is a freelance documentary filmmaker, video journalist, director/producer and photographer from Abuja, Nigeria. He has worked in a lot of hostile environment stories that highlight the plights of humanity. His work focuses on international development, health, and human rights, and he has DP’d documentary films for international outlets such as Vice News, CNN, BBC, Aljazeera, Bloomberg, Russia Today, Ruptly, RedfishMedia, WaterBear, Goldman Environmental, Deutsche Welle (DW), TRT World, VOA; and international aid organisation such as United Nation, UNOCHA, World Health Organisation, UNICEF Geneva, UNICEF Nigeria, World Food Programme (WFP), F.A.O, Save The Children UK, INTERSOS, among others. 

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