Category: Trainers and panelists

Emma Thomasson is a British journalist, media adviser and trainer based in Germany. She specialises in leadership, communication, strategy and workplace wellbeing. Previously she worked at Reuters as a correspondent and bureau chief in multiple countries and also ran a global mentoring programme and a peer network. She works as a consultant and facilitator for several organisations, including The Self Investigation, helping to transform working environments and support teams.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2025 Sessions

Stress, burnout and other mental health hazards

We will learn how stress works and how chronic stress can lead to burnout, as well as how we can protect ourselves and our colleagues so that we can make journalists more resilient to a range of challenges, including online harassment.

We will discuss why journalists are particularly at risk of burnout and learn about other risks, such as vicarious trauma and moral injury. The session will include a mixture of theory and interaction, providing a safe space for an open discussion that will give participants the chance to share experiences and tips and explore ways to promote resilience and support each other.

Improving team communication, managing conflict

We will learn about common communication pitfalls and different styles of conflict management and share experiences of how to improve team dynamics.

This will be a very interactive session, where you will identify your preferred style of conflict resolution and explore what you can do to improve challenging relationships and cultivate assertiveness, while promoting team collaboration.

Alexenia Dimitrova is an award-winning journalist, OSINT expert and lecturer in journalism. She is a Member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and, together with the ICIJ team, a holder of a shared Pulitzer award (2017) for their work on The Panama Papers global investigation.

Dimitrova is the author of five non-fiction books (2005-2019) and the Guide for Investigative Journalists in Their Work with Whistle-blowers in SEE (2023). She is a co-author of the Manual for Investigative Reporting: Practical tips for a good investigation (2007) and two documentary films (2018-2019). She is also a founding member of the South East Europe Coalition on Whistle-blower Protection (2015) and a certified tutor in journalism by the BBC and SEENPM.

She has been training students and midcareer journalists around the world since 2003.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2025 Sessions

101 Cross-Border Sources for Your Climate Investigation: How to Research Climate in the Digital Age

Sharing practical knowledge and tools on using global open records to research climate, Alexenia Dimitrova will present a large set of useful open-source web-based free-of-charge international climate public registers, platforms and databases, which can be used for cross-border climate investigations and reporting, if local or national authorities restrict climate information.

101 Open and Hidden Places to Investigate Your Country

This session will present a large set of useful international public registers, databases and archives, equipping the participants with skills to obtain and track information about their countries despite local authorities’ or entities’ restrictions.

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 2025 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.

AX Mina is part-time Program Director at The Self-Investigation. She is also a strategic consultant and leadership coach who’s supported news leaders and managers through programs with LION Publishers, The OpEd Project and the American Press Institute. She was a founding board member of the News Product Alliance and is a Senior Civic Media Fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Journalism and Communications. She is a certified trauma-informed yoga teacher and lifelong mindfulness practitioner.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

How to Avoid Digital Overwhelm: Mental Health Workshop

This course will teach you how to manage the digital distractions that drain your focus and impact your wellbeing, offering practical tips for reducing stress, recognising the effects of multitasking, and protecting your sleep for better rest.

Stress Management to Become a Better Journalist: Mental Health Workshop

In this course, you’ll learn to identify stress signals and risk factors for burnout, manage your stress levels while maintaining your inner balance, and practice taking mindful pauses during a busy workday to support your mental health.

Optional Relaxing Session: Gentle Yoga and Mindfulness

This optional relaxing session will offer participants a soothing blend of gentle yoga and mindfulness practices designed to foster relaxation and mental clarity.

Ali Fegan is an investigative reporter at SVT. Since 2008 Fegan has worked mainly as a reporter but also as a producer, host and researcher at Scandinavia’s largest investigative TV-show “Uppdrag granskning/Mission investigate’’. For the last couple of years he has focused on and participated in various international collaborations with media such as The Guardian, Bellingcat, Le Monde and Süddeutsche Zeitung, an investigation of the UN, the Catholic Church, state corruption and human trafficking. In 2003 the hard-hitting investigation “Putin’s Shadow War’’ on Russian intelligence operations in the Nordic countries was published by the Nordic public service companies, including SVT.  Ali Fegan and his colleague Maria Georgieva took part as reporters. He has been nominated and won several national and international prizes such as Emmy 2019, IRE 2009 and 2019, Dig Awards 2016 and Prix Europa 2019.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

Mission Investigate at Scandinavian Public Broadcasters

Ali Fegan and Maria Georgieva will join forces to deepen the understanding of how digging in databases combined with classic fieldwork can create ground-breaking and impactful investigative journalism.

Putin’s Shadow War: How Did We Do It

Ali Fegan and Maria Gerogieva will demonstrate how Nordic public service broadcasting effectively employs data and classic fieldwork by showcasing their Case study.

Apostolis Fotiadis covers EU policy issues including developments in population movement, security and defence, privacy and big data policies. In the past, he has cooperated with many international media outlets and organisations. He has authored numerous reports, published two books on EU migration and border control policies and has been a member of numerous cross-border investigations. He currently co-operates with BIRN and Solomon.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

After Publication: How to Strategically Roll Out Investigation With as Much Impact as Possible

Many investigative stories fail to reach their full impact post-publication due to various factors that, while not entirely controllable, can be strategically influenced. This session will identify these factors and entry points for enhancing impact, illustrated with examples from previous BIRN investigations.

Besar Likmeta is the editor in chief of BIRN Albania and its award-winning publication Reporter.al. For a long time Likmeta was Albanian correspondent for BIRN’s flagship publication BalkanInsight.com and has contributed to various international media, including The Christian Science Monitor, Global Post, Transitions Online, Foreign Policy, Washington Post and others.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

Environmental and Sustainable Energy Investigative Journalism

This session will introduce journalists to BIRN Albania’s investigative techniques used to uncover a major corruption scandal involving the Minister of Environment and the Deputy Prime Minister, detailing the methods employed to expose fraud and money laundering in public-private partnership contracts for waste incinerators, including how leads were obtained, documents secured, sources interviewed, and narratives crafted.

Boris Budini is a Systems Architect at Cloud68.co, Co-founder of LibreLabs Albania, and dedicated advocate for digital rights and open access. Since 2015, he’s been a familiar face in hackerspaces in Tirana and Torino, collaborating with fellow activists to champion digital freedoms. As a core team member of CryptoParty Tirana organising team, Boris has played a pivotal role in creating an environment where cryptoparties could take place and security knowledge could be shared.

His expertise extends to digital infrastructure, where he specialises in building Linux-based systems to empower individuals and communities to take control against a BigTech owned web. As part of his open source journey, he has been engaged with various projects and communities such as Mozilla and Nextcloud.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

How do Tech & Journalism Intersect and What to Do With It

Boris Budini and Redon Skikuli will jointly explore how to extract more insights from publicly available open-source information online,  showcasing of powerful tools and practical skills for investigative journalism. From data analysis to online research, we will try to get some practical skills and resources that can be used daily.

Group session: Advanced Deep & Dark Web

In this session, Boris Budini and Redon Skikuli will explore safe navigation techniques for investigating stories on the deep and dark web, including advanced methods for secure payments and information analysis, with live demonstrations and hands-on experience.

Elena Kostyuchenko is a Russian independent journalist. For 17 years she was a special correspondent of Novaya Gazeta, till the newspaper was shut down under the pressure of Russian authorities in March 2022. She reported on conflict, crime, human rights and social issues. Kostyuchenko was among the first to prove the presence of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. She covered the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the second day of the war. Now she collaborates with the independent Russian exiled media Meduza.

Kostyuchenko’s book “I Love Russia”, named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker and TIME, documents her country as experienced by those whom it aims to erase: girls from the provinces coerced into sex work, queer people, patients and doctors at a Ukrainian hospital under attack, and reporters like herself targeted by the abusive government. Her work was acknowledged with multiple awards including the European Press Prize, the Gerd Bucerius Award-Free Press of Eastern Europe, and the Paul Klebnikov Prize.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

How to Report From a Lost Country

Session explores the unique challenges of reporting from authoritarian countries, including fieldwork strategies, source recruitment, safety, resisting government pressure, verifying information, and countering propaganda, using Russia as a case study.

An award-winning journalist and editor, currently focused on digital rights. Ivana specialises in topics such as investigating organised crime, misuse of public money, digital rights and the use and impact of AI.

In 2021, she completed the European Broadcasting Union’s media trainers program. She began her career at the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS) and later became Deputy Editor-in-Chief.

She has been a fact-checker at OCCRP since 2013 and an External Assessor at the International Fact-Checking Network since 2017. Her accolades include the European Press Prize, Anthony Lewis prize and the Balkan Fact-Checking Award.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

Gender-based Violence Online: Reporting for Impact

Ivana Jeremic and Kreshnik Gashi will jointly enhance media reporting on online gender-based violence by using practical tools and experiences to promote ethical reporting, protect victims, and drive actions from social media platforms and governments. A series of impact gender-based violence stories will be presented as case studies.