Category: Trainers and panelists

Her favorite topics are secret archives of the Cold War era, shadow affairs and corruption, money laundering, suspicious ownership and property. Recently she has also been acitive in finding separated families from all over the World and reuniting them.
Since 1998 she has sent about 700 FOIA requests to 10 US institutions to ask for declassification of documents from the Cold War Era. In parallel she continues her work in the Bulgarian Secret Archives from the same time.

Alexenia has just finished her fourth book based on using the FOIA. She is the author of 3 other books: ‘The Iron Fist’ (2005, London – in English), ‘The War of the Spies’ (2005), and ‘The King’s Secret Files’ (2009), which became bestsellers in Bulgaria.

She is trainer on investigative journalism and access to information certified by South East European Network for Professionalization of the Media (SEENPM). Since 2003 she has been training mid career journalists in Bulgaria and around the World.

Alexenia is a visiting lecturer in investigative journalism at Sofia University, and a researcher and team member for various international media projects.

She was also was the local trainer on investigative journalism in a 3 year project run by BBC preceding the implementation of the media Self-regulation and the Code of Ethics in Bulgaria.
Between 2005 and 2009 she was  a member of the Bulgarian Press Complaint Commission.

In November 2004 she received the most prestigious Award for investigative journalism in Bulgaria, having been nominated for the same Award for 2003. In 2006 she received the Golden Key Award – for using FOIAs both in Bulgaria and the USA.

Dimitrova has 2 university degrees from Sofia University and post graduate fellowships  in the World Press Institute – Minneapolis, in the University of Missouri, the University of Minneapolis (USA), Reuters (UK), Archus School of Journalism (Denmark), and the European Center for Journalism (Maastricht).

She has addressed seminars and other events of investigative journalism in Bulgaria, Switzerland, Denmark, Croatia, Netherlands, Moldova, Armenia, Slovenia, Germany, Bosnia, Albania, Azerbaijan, Canada, Turkey, Norway and Poland.
She is a member of Union of Bulgarian Journalists, the Investigative Journalists Association – Bulgaria, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the South East European Media Organization (SEEMO).

http://www.thereactionary.com/en/index.html?info=367&menuks=209&ppid=6

She has headed the organization sincefrom 2001 and before that worked as the head of criminal police directorate’s department for organised crime groups in Ljubljana.

From 1991 onwards, Popovic has been holding regular training in the field of organised crime and human trafficking, and is was the author of several publications on the subject.

During her work with Society Kljuc, Popovic established an emergency hotline, safe houses and other important help forvictims.

She also set up and implemented a programme for primary and secondary schools on the prevention of human trafficking.

Popovic has trained judges in human trafficking issues through the justice ministry’s judicial school and has trained education professionals after being appointed by the education ministry to Ljubljana city municipality’s committee for children’s rights.

He started researching the Ukrainian conflict in the summer 2014 and began contributing to Bellingcat. in September 2014 he discovered that the Buk missile launcher used to down flight MH17 came from Russia and was able to find the military unit that it belonged to. He was one of the Bellingcat MH17 investigation team that produced report on the origin of the Separatists’ Buk and has continued to work on subsequent Bellingcat projects on the war in Ukraine. He is also currently working and providing training with the OCCRP, focusing on using open source information to investigate crime and corruption. Presently he is studying Law at the University of York.

He has won eleven major journalism prizes, and was most recently awarded the prestigious Reporter of the Year Prize at the British Press Awards in 2014 and the European Press Prize in 2013. He is the co-author of ‘Undercover: The True Story of Britain’s Secret Police’ and has presented TV documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4 and Al-Jazeera.

In his previous role as Special Projects Editor, Paul ran high-profile investigations and led led Reading the Riots, the landmark research study into the causes and consequences of the England riots. He is currently co-writing a book on the riots. He lectures across Europe about the use of social media in journalism and teaches a masterclass in investigative reporting.

Paul joined the Guardian as a trainee is 2005 after studying at Cambridge University and Harvard University. He lives in Washington. You can watch his 2010 TED talk here.

Graduated from Faculty of Philology, Belgrade University in 2001. Have been at Ringier since 2004, started from Marketing, through Business development and Publishing management till becoming general manager of all Ringier activities in Serbia in 2008. Previous working expertise in sales and FMCG.

www.ringier.rs

Milorad has also worked as a correspondent for the the French news agency EPN and has had articles published in such international newspapers as The Sunday Times in the UK, El Mundo in Spain, Der Standard in Austria and the Washington times.

Milorad produced Hidden Wounds, a documentary film on post-traumatic stress disorder which was made in co-operation with the BBC.

His investigations have included work on human trafficking (in association with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting),  the employment of Balkan mercenaries by British and US security firms in Iraq, and arms trafficking from Ukraine into Serbia.

In 2007 Milorad was selected for the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence.

In 2009, Babovic won an award for her investigative reports on corruption given by the Media Institute as part of the campaign ‘Society without Corruption.’ She is also part of the investigative programme ‘Under the Scope’ that is conducted by Vijesti and the weekly Monitor, along with MANS.

Last year, Babovic participated in a project funded by USAID called Good Governance Activity in Montenegro.  She also conducted research on a series of investigative pieces pertaining to the efficiency of juridical work.

Babovic lives in Podgorica and is a lawyer by vocation.

His work has ranged from hard news stories and war reporting for the CBS Evening News to longer investigative pieces for prime-time broadcasts such as 60 Minutes II and Public Eye.

He has won numerous awards for his work including the DuPont Silver Baton, an Emmy Award, an Overseas Press Club Award for Human rights reporting, a Sigma Delta Chi Award for Breaking News and three RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Awards.

He is currently based in Belgrade but travels extensively, with his most recent work largely focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the beginning of her career, she reported on political and economic topics. In past years, her focus is on stories pertaining to corruption. Presently, she is coordinating an investigative journalism programme for the NGO MANS, which is devoted to fighting corruption and organized crime.