Category: Trainers and panelists

Bojana Paneva is a Senior Associate at Qoku & Partners based in Skopje, North Macedonia.

With nearly ten years of experience as an attorney, Bojana focuses her practice on dispute resolution. She is experienced in domestic and international commercial and investment arbitration and regularly represents clients before courts in complex litigation proceedings. 

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

Reporting Under Legal Pressure: Protecting Investigative Journalists from Legal Risks and Reprisals

This session examines the legal risks faced by investigative journalists when reporting on matters of public interest, including defamation claims, privacy and data-protection issues, protection of journalistic sources, confidentiality, and strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs). It will explore how legal proceedings, threats of litigation, and other forms of legal pressure can be used not only to seek legitimate remedies but also to intimidate journalists, create financial and psychological burdens, and discourage further reporting.

The session will provide a practical overview of the legal framework protecting freedom of expression and investigative journalism, with particular attention to the European Convention on Human Rights and relevant European Court of Human Rights case law. It will also consider the Macedonian legal context and the role of lawyers in preventing and responding to legal threats against journalists.

Through practical examples and case studies, participants will discuss how journalists and their legal advisers can assess risks before publication, protect confidential sources, respond to legal threats, and distinguish legitimate legal claims from abusive litigation. The session aims to strengthen practical legal protection for investigative journalism while maintaining the necessary balance between freedom of expression, individual rights, and the public interest.

Besar Likmeta is an Albanian journalist and editor with more than two decades of experience in print, television and digital media in the US and Albania. Editor of BIRN Albania since 2007 and Balkan Insight’s former Albania correspondent, he began his career at the Florida Times-Union. His reporting has appeared in international publications including The Christian Science Monitor, Global Post, Washington Post, The Sunday Telegraph and Foreign Policy. In 2009, Likmeta received the CEI/SEEMO Award for Outstanding Merits in Investigative Journalism.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

The Flamingo Revolution: Environmental Journalism in the Middle of a Protest and an Information War

The session will explore how Reporter.al covered Albania’s “Flamingo Revolution”, a protest movement that emerged from opposition to a major tourism development linked to the Trump family in the protected Vjosa-Narta landscape and evolved into a wider challenge to government policies, political power and the influence of private interests. Using Reporter.al’s reporting as a case study, the presentation will examine how journalists combined reporting from the ground with public records, corporate research, environmental evidence and digital verification to establish what was happening and who stood behind key decisions.

The session will also examine how the story expanded beyond the physical protests into a contested information space. Government officials, pro-government media, activists and social-media accounts promoted competing explanations of the movement, including allegations of foreign interference, misleading or manipulated imagery and efforts to discredit individual protesters. Participants will see how journalists can investigate such claims without inadvertently amplifying them or abandoning critical scrutiny of the protest movement itself.

Based in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, Azem reports on daily developments for BIRN’s Balkan Insight and Balkan Transitional Justice programme. He covers politics, rule of law and human rights, transitional justice, corruption and organised crime, producing in-depth analyses, investigations and features combining elements of traditional and data journalism and multimedia storytelling.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

Geolocation and Visual Investigation

In this session, participants will explore how to harness open-source techniques and visual clues to uncover, verify and analyse digital evidence found online.

Through hands-on examples, the training will show how even the most ordinary elements in a photo or video can reveal the exact location of an event.

Attendees will learn how to cross-reference visuals with publicly available satellite imagery, maps, and metadata, and use investigative tools like Google Earth, Street View and reverse image search to build solid geolocation findings.

Ana has been working as a journalist since 1997. She was a staff writer for the Skopje-based Forum magazine until 2000. During the 1999 Kosovo conflict, she also worked with television stations Arte, Spiegel TV and RAI Uno.

In 2000 she won a scholarship for a professional year development at Indiana University’s School of Journalism and spent a year in the United States. While overseas, she worked as a correspondent for Deutsche Welle’s Macedonian service.

From 2001 until May 2003 she covered the Macedonian conflict and its aftermath for Reuters. In 2002 she was Associate producer of IWPR`s documentary “Ohrid and beyond”. She was IWPR Country Director for Macedonia from 2003 until 2005.

In 2005 she established the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Macedonia, a local non-governmental organisation which is part of the wider regional network. In 2006 she produced BIRN`s documentary on Kosovo “Does Anyone Have a Plan?”. She has chaired and attended numerous public debates and is often invited to comment on current affairs in Macedonia by local and international media as The Economist, Radio Free Europe, BBC, CNN.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

Engaged Citizens Reporting (ECR)

Audiences are increasingly dispersed and less actively engaged in supporting journalism’s core purpose of revealing and reporting facts. Engaged citizen reporting offers a way forward by revealing under-reported: citizens can become active participants in investigations, surfacing facts, pointing journalists toward where abuse or misconduct is happening, and providing evidence to support reporting. Through engaged citizen reporting, BIRN has produced some of its most important investigations on issues related to online abuse, environmental damage, gender-based discrimination and many more.

In collaboration with Karla Juničić, Engaged Citizens Reporting Programme Coordinator, this session will show how to launch an audience-engaged project and what to consider along the way — from crowdsourcing evidence, preparing effective callouts, to fact-checking and analysis and shaping storytelling. It will also address how to keep citizens engaged throughout the process, and why involving them ultimately builds greater trust and connection with your journalism.

Freedom of Information: Using FOI to Strengthen Investigative Reporting

This session will explore how Freedom of Information (FOI) can be used as a powerful tool for investigative journalism. It will focus on practical ways journalists can use FOI requests to uncover information, generate new leads, verify findings and strengthen evidence-based investigations. The session will also look at common challenges journalists face when requesting information and strategies for overcoming them.

Alex Anderson spent his early career in the former Soviet countries, alternating between running intergovernmental humanitarian aid projects and researching for investigative TV documentaries. After completing a master’s in social policy, he progressed as a researcher/country director through international human rights and conflict prevention.

NGOs: covering a range of Eastern European countries for Amnesty International, the South Caucasus for Human Rights Watch and Kosovo for the International Crisis Group. 

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

Policy-oriented investigative reporting

The training will show how to adjust research, writing and follow-up to the requirements of policy-oriented reporting. 

Field investigation → Political analysis → Prescription → Intended policy effect

Recreating the International Crisis Group high-impact model

Based in New York as the investigative projects editor at Reuters, Blake Morrison has overseen and edited three projects that were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize: The Child Exchange, an investigation of America’s underground market for adopted children; The Echo Chamber, a special report that revealed how a handful of lawyers came to have an outsized influence in the US Supreme Court; and Cheat Sheet, an investigation into how standardised tests used by universities  to determine who to accept have been compromised by rampant, systematic cheating and other security failures.

Projects he has overseen have resulted in decades of jail time for individuals whose wrongdoing the Reuters investigations have exposed.

Prior to joining Reuters, Blake served as the investigations editor, deputy enterprise editor and investigative reporter at USA TODAY. His investigation into the impact of industrial pollution on schoolchildren spurred the US government to launch a $2.25-million project to examine the air outside more than 60 schools across the nation. The reporting earned honours including the Grantham Prize, a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, the Fourth Estate Award, the America’s Promise Journalism Award, the Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting, the Fred M. Hechinger Grand Prize, the John B. Oakes Award and the Philip Meyer Journalism Award. Before joining USA TODAY, Blake spent six years as a beat reporter, investigative reporter and editor at the St Paul Pioneer Press.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

The Investigative Mindset

This interactive presentation is designed to reignite our curiosity and creativity in the field of investigative journalism.

Formulating Story Ideas: How to Structure Your Pitch

Building on lessons learned throughout the week, this final session will guide participants in crafting a compelling pitch that captures the essence of the story.

The Art of Interview

This session will explore the techniques and strategies essential for conducting effective interviews. From developing a personal interviewing style to navigating difficult conversations.

Sasa joined BIRN in 2020 as a correspondent for Balkan Insight. Previously, he worked for Balkan Insight from 2015 to 2016.

He has also worked for Insajder, the Serbian investigative media portal and for a television show in Belgrade. As a part of the Insajder team, he worked on documentaries involving political corruption, financial crime and social and workers’ rights. He was co-author of the investigative documentary State against the Workers, about financial crime in Gosa, Serbia’s railway factory, author of Bristol Guard, a documentary about homeless war veterans, and In a Vicious Circle, a documentary about real estate fraud in the country.

During his journalistic career, Sasa has published articles in both Serbian and regional media, such as the investigative portal KRIK, the weeklies NIN and Vreme, the daily Danas, the fact-check portal Istinomer, Vice Serbia, Kosovo 2.0 and others.

He has received awards for his articles, including the EU award for investigative journalism as well as the “Dejan Anastasijević” investigative journalism award. In 2023, he was awarded the prestigious “Dušan Bogavac” award for ethics and courage in journalism.

Sasa has a bachelor degree in journalism from the Faculty of Political Science in Belgrade. He speaks Serbian and English.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2025 Session

BIRN Awarded Investigative Stories

Saša Dragojlo and Kreshnik Gashi will deliver an insightful session in which these two award-winning journalists share experiences from their most acclaimed investigations. This session offers a behind-the-scenes look at their work, highlighting practical techniques, challenges faced in the field, and key lessons learned from the front lines of investigative journalism.

Denis has worked as a journalist since 2006, starting his career in Oslobodjenje, a daily newspaper in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has also worked for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting IWPR in Sarajevo and The Hague, reporting on transitional justice issues and covering war crimes trials related to the 1992-1995 conflict in Bosnia.

He joined BIRN in August 2008 and has since worked as a journalist, deputy editor and chief editor for BIRN BiH before being named Executive Director and Editor in October 2019. He has won multiple individual awards for transitional justice reporting, and BIRN BIH received the European press prize special award under his leadership.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2025 Session

Reporting in times of crisis – war crimes reporting

The session will introduce journalists to the basics of international humanitarian law, and reporting about war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. I will explain the journalistic techniques which can be used in real time reporting as well as in situations where atrocities have occurred in the past. Special emphasis will be given to interviewing victims who were or are traumatised.

Sharbil Nammour is a seasoned security and risk management expert, with deep expertise in both physical and digital threat mitigation. From Kabul to Kyiv, he develops and leads comprehensive risk solutions for international news organisations and journalists: training, crisis response, and hostile environment operations.

A Peabody Award recipient, Emmy nominee, and New York Bar attorney, his work integrates proactive digital threat modelling, physical security and safety into pragmatic solutions that safeguard reporters. Sharbil holds dual common/civil law degrees, alongside advanced certifications in pre-hospital trauma care and mental health first aid.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2025 Sessions

Null Hypothesis: Pragmatic Digital Security for Journalists

When the press is targeted, surveillance cheap, and devices compromise routine, assuming you’re secure – or worse, ignoring the threats – exacerbates the risks.

This session begins from the opposite premise: You are a journalist = you are already compromised — now what?

This pragmatic session is tailored for journalists working in or covering the Balkans.

The political reality, authority tactics and state-level surveillance across borders create a challenging digital environment.

Rather than offering false reassurances, or one-size-fits-all tools, we’ll walk through threat-informed behaviours and workflows grounded in the assumption that your devices, data, or communications may already be exposed.

We’ll explore the practical overlap between digital and physical security – how cross referenced data can reveal or predict your movements, how compromised contacts increase in-field risk, and how poor digital hygiene can lead to source exposure, detention, and mental exhaustion.

Participants will leave with an actionable framework to assess their personal exposure, prioritize what’s worth protecting, build out a stress management support response, and adopt enabling strategies that help return online agency to the journalist.

Protest Ready: Security, First Aid & Digital Defense

This focused session equips journalists with practical tools to stay safe while covering protests and civil unrest.

We’ll explore the specific threats reporters face from both crowds and authorities, and how to reduce risks through situational awareness, de-escalation and smart positioning. The session will also include a “mini-med” segment on treating the most common protest-related injuries in the field. We’ll connect the physical with the digital– covering how to protect yourself from surveillance, safeguard your devices, and minimize data exposure during fast-moving protests.

Drawing on real-world examples and recent protest coverage, this training blends operational know-how with actionable digital security steps so you can protect yourself, your colleagues and your sources.

Reade Levinson is a visual investigations reporter for Reuters, based in London. She was part of a team that was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for a series that revealed secrets behind the Nigerian military’s long campaign to crush the nation’s Islamist insurgency. She has also written about the weapons flow into Sudan, a massacre in Burkina Faso, stolen Ukrainian grain, the wealth of Burmese generals and the international trade in human body parts. Previously, she reported on U.S. immigration and policing from New York.

Her work with her Reuters colleagues has received several awards, including a Selden Ring Award, a Gerald Loeb Award, a Scripps Howard Award and an Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics, among others.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2025 Sessions

Masterclass in Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT): Part 1

Whether you’re a complete beginner, or looking to strengthen your investigative skills, these two sessions are designed to teach essential OSINT tools and techniques to advance your research and reporting. In the first session, you will learn advanced search techniques, geolocation and image analysis, and how to leverage different satellite imagery providers to track and investigate events.

Masterclass in Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT): Part 2

On the second day, we’ll go over plane and ship tracking, identifying disinformation, and dive deeper into more advanced satellite imagery analysis and geolocation. The goal is that by the end of both sessions, you will feel comfortable using open-source skills regularly in your research and reporting to verify information and deepen your investigations.