Category: Trainers and panelists

Marija Ristic

Marija Ristic is an investigative journalist, with a decade-long experience in war crimes reporting, open-source research and emerging technologies.

She is currently a manager at Amnesty International Crisis Evidence Lab, running Digital Verification Corps – a network that supports Amnesty International teams in human rights documentation and fact-finding. Evidence Lab brings together investigators, engineers, developers and others to pilot new and expanding tools such as artificial intelligence, remote sensing, weapons identification and big-data analytics. Before joining Amnesty, Marija was an executive director of Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, leading media non-profit in Southeast and Central Europe. For her work as a journalist, she received numerous awards, including the Reporters Without Borders Annual Press Freedom award.  She graduated from Geneva Academy for International Humanitarian Law, as previously held fellowship positions at Columbia University New York and Free University Berlin.

 

Laura Ranca

Laura Ranca works with the RISE Project (www.riseproject.ro), a community of investigative journalists, programmers, graphic artists and activists from Romania who investigate cross-border corruption and organized crime, and develop advanced data research and visualization tools.

Laura coordinates the development of Visual Investigative Scenarios, a data visualization platform designed to assist investigative journalists, activists and others in mapping complex business or crime networks (www.vis.occrp.org).

Her current work also includes training journalists and activists on data visualization and a research project on media ownership in Moldova.

Previously, Laura has worked as a public communications officer with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Democratic Republic of the Congo and as a researcher with the Center for Media and Communications Studies at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

Gordana Igric

Gordana Igric is BIRN’s Regional Director.  She began her career as a journalist in Belgrade in 1981.

Gordana reported from Bosnia and Kosovo during the wars that followed the dissolution of former Yugoslavia and returned there to research and document war crimes.

She has received several journalism awards such as the 1998 Overseas Press Club (USA) Award for Human Rights Reporting and a Human Rights Watch, HRW, award in the same year for her research into war crimes in Foca, Bosnia & Herzegovina.

She was Balkan project manager at the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, IWPR, from 1999 until August 2005 during which time IWPR’s Balkan reporting received numerous press awards and media citations.

She is the founder of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and currently serves as the Regional Network Director.

Miranda Patrucic

Miranda Patrucic is a leading investigative reporter and regional editor with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and the lead investigator with Investigative Dashboard.

She is also an international speaker who has trained investigative reporters, anti-corruption groups and police in dozens of countries around the world. She was the lead reporter on projects exposing alliances between government, business and organized crime in Montenegro as well as crime and corruption involving the First Bank of Montenegro that uncovered the massive misuse of public funds. She was part of a team that reported on how the Bosnian government bought an apartment for the prime minister, which led to his indictment and resignation in 2009. She was the lead reporter on a joint project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on tobacco smuggling in Montenegro that uncovered many of that country’s prime minister’s hidden assets. She also worked on ICIJ’s project Looting the Seas, uncovering a $4 billion black market in endangered bluefin tuna. Both projects won IRE’s Tom Renner award for crime reporting. She also worked on OCCRP’s Offshore Crime, Inc. series that won the Daniel Pearl Award. As a specialist in tracking people and companies, Patrucic has worked with reporters from the Middle East, Europe, US, Canada, Latin America and Australia.

Gavin Rees

Gavin Rees is the director of Dart Centre Europe, a not-for-profit media organisation that is dedicated to supporting informed, innovative and ethical news reporting on violence, conflict and tragedy

The Centre operates as part of a global, interdisciplinary network of news professionals, mental health experts, educators and researchers who work in such areas as crime, family violence, natural disaster, war and human rights.

Over the last 15 years Gavin has worked in a variety of broadcast media, producing business and political news for international networks, as well as working on drama and documentary films for the BBC, Channel 4 and other broadcasters.

During this work Gavin has developed a specialist interest in understanding and teaching the dynamics of interview situations and, in particular, how journalists might best approach vulnerable people who have been affected by traumatic violence or structural poverty.

Gavin is a former Research Fellow at Bournemouth Media School and was a leading member of the production team for the BBC documentary drama, Hiroshima, which won an international Emmy in 2006.

http://dartcenter.org/staff#bio-849 or http://dartcenter.org/

Marija Andjelkovic

Marija Andjelkovic LL.M. is an anti-traffickingexpert, human rights activist and one of the founders and current president of ASTRA, the first organisation to address the human trafficking issue in Serbia.

Andjelkovic began her career as an activist as project manager atthe NGO SOS Hotline and Centre for Girls in 1998. While working at the Centrewith girls who fell victim to various forms of violence, Andjelkovic was one ofsix women who recognised the presence of human trafficking in Serbia. From theearly 2000s she devoted her career to the development of victim supportmechanisms and appropriate responses to the crime of trafficking on the statelevel.

Over the past 15 years,Andjelkovic has been a trainer at more than 200 workshops, training sessionsand seminars in Serbia and abroad, sharing her anti-trafficking expertise withprofessionals from institutions, professors, social workers, journalists, policeofficers, the UN Peace Corps, judges, prosecutors, NGO representatives andstudents. She also took part in defining the working methodology for the SOShotline for victims of trafficking, founding the Regional NGO ACTA (Anti CorruptionAnti Trafficking Action) and presenting alternative reports to UN committees (2001-date).

As the president of ASTRA, she hasled eight large-scale media campaigns and produced a manual for journalistscreated as a tool for responsible and reliable reporting on trafficking inhuman beings.

 

She is the author of numerousarticle, manuals and handbooks on the trafficking issue.

Nick Davies

Nick Davies has been named Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year for his investigations into crime, drugs, poverty and other social issues.

Hundreds of journalists have attended his one-day masterclass on the techniques of investigative reporting, in Britain, Canada, China, Germany, India and South Africa.

He has been a journalist since 1976 and is currently a freelance, working regularly as special correspondent for The Guardian. He also makes TV documentaries; he was formerly an on-screen reporter for World In Action. His four books include White Lies (about a racist miscarriage of justice in Texas) and Dark Heart (about poverty in Britain). He was the first winner of the Martha Gellhorn award for investigative reporting for his work on failing schools and recently won the award for European Journalism for his work on drugs policy. Flat Earth News, his controversial book exposing falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the news media, was published as a hardback in February 2008 and as a paperback in January 2009. In May 2009, Flat Earth News won the first Bristol Festival of Ideas book award, to be given annually for a book which “presents new, important and challenging ideas, which is rigorously argued, and which is engaging and accessible.” It is now being translated into Thai, Vietnamese, Greek, Dutch, Slovenian, Ukrainian and Chinese. In November 2009, the University of Westminster made him an honorary fellow ‘for services to journalism’.

Stevan Dojcinovic

Stevan Dojcinovic is an investigative reporter based in Belgrade who works for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Centre for Investigative Journalism in Serbia (CINS). 

He specializes in investigating links between organized crime and Balkan businessmen, privatisation deals, money laundering, private security agencies and the gambling industry. He also teaches journalists how to collect and analyse business data and property records.

Dojcinovic interviewed Zoran Copic, one of the key figures in the Balkan crime underworld while he was hiding in Bosnia from Serbian authorities. He has also investigated the role of the Balkan mafia in international cocaine smuggling. His stories have been published and quoted in various media all over the Balkans.

Dojcinovic won Jug Grizelj award for investigative journalism from 2012, the 2011 Daniel Pearl Awards for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting, the National Award for Investigative Reporting in 2011 and 2012, third award of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence in 2011 and ICFJ fellowship in 2012.

Ognian Zlatev

Ognian Zlatev was born on 6.3.1963 in Sofia, Bulgaria. He graduated from the Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski and holds an M.A. in Classical Philology with specializations in Ancient Greek Culture and Bulgarian Language and Literature

Mr. Zlatev has completed a number of trainings and has obtained qualifications in political communication, media relations, journalism training, international PR, European Union communications, election campaigning, and media development.

He currently works as Managing Director of the Media Development Center in Bulgaria. The organisation was established in 1998 to promote the development of independent media in Bulgaria, to foster media capacity building and to boost networking and cross-border cooperation in Southeast Europe.

He is a founding member and board member of the South East European Network for Professionalization of the Media (SEENPM), which currently includes fifteen media centers and institutes from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia. From 2002 to 2004 he was the president of the organization.

Ognian Zlatev also works as an external communications and public outreach consultant for the World Bank Office in Bulgaria and as a media expert for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and UNESCO.

He has been a lecturer at the Diplomatic Institute of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Bulgaria, the Albanian Media Institute in Tirana and Media Plan Institute in Sarajevo, as well as a speaker at numerous international conferences in Southeast Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.

He has worked as director of Information Centres for the Open Society Institute in Sofia,  manager of the BBC Centre in Bulgaria and an exchange officer at the British Council office in Bulgaria.

Ognian Zlatev is a board member of the National Council for Journalism Ethics of Bulgaria. He sits on the steering committee of the Global Forum for Media Development and on the Board of SEENPM. He is a member of the selection committee of the annual Robert Schumann Award of the European Commission Representation in Bulgaria and of the Dr. Erhard Busek SEEMO Award for Better Understanding.

http://www.mediacenterbg.org/

Paul Myers

Paul joined the BBC in 1995 as a news information researcher. This followed an earlier career in computers and internet experience dating back to the 1970’s.

 

As the internet grew in significance, Paul was able to blend his technical knowledge of the medium with the realities of his work in the BBC. As a result, he was able to devise many groundbreaking techniques and strategies that continue to shape the way journalists conduct online research and investigation.

Paul heads up BBC Academy’s Investigative Hub project. This sees him work within program teams, solving issues related to investigation whilst sharing vital new skills with those he works with. Paul will source experts in diverse fields as required.

He also manages and delivers training related to various related areas such as online research, business research, due diligence, people research, data journalism and analysis, reporting of statistics, social media investigation, digital security, saving and verifying evidence, digital photography, web design and image production.

Paul’s techniques have helped his colleagues develop creative approaches to research , conduct their investigations securely and have lead many journalists to information they would never have otherwise been able to find.

He has worked with leading programmes like Panorama, Watchdog, national news bulletins, BBC Online, local & national radio and the World Service. He is also a regular blogger on the BBC College of Journalism website.

He has also helped train personnel from The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Times, the Financial Tine, Channel 4, CNN, the World Bank and the UNDP.

Away from his training & consultancy work, Paul does a lot of Photography and is building up a large library of stock photos. Enquire for details.