Lisa Dittmer is the Advocacy Officer for Internet Freedom at Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Germany. She champions freedom of information and media freedom in digital and security policy, covering topics such as online censorship, cyber-surveillance, and platform regulation. She previously worked on digital policy issues at Wikimedia Deutschland and studied international relations and conflict studies in the UK and France.
Twitter: @lisdittmer
Attila Mong is a Hungarian freelance journalist based in Berlin. He works as the Europe representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Mong is also an innovation consultant for the DW Akademie and a board member for Hungarian investigative journalism outlet, Átlátszó. He was John S. Knight Journalism fellow (2013) and Hoover Institution research fellow (2011) at Stanford University. He is the author of several books and recipient of the 2004 Pulitzer Memorial Prize for Best Investigative Journalism and the 2003 Soma Investigative Journalism Prize.
Twitter: @attilamong
Silvia Chocarro is the Head of Protection at ARTICLE 19, a global organisation promoting freedom of expression worldwide. She sits on the IFEX Council and is a member of the Centre for Freedom of Media, University of Sheffield. In her twenty-year career, she has worked for media development groups and intergovernmental organisations as well as a journalist for media outlets. She holds a PhD in Journalism from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain; her dissertation focused on the role of the UN in journalists’ safety. She is the author of several reports on the safety of journalists and gender and media.
Twitter: @silviachocarro
Boryana Dzhambazova is a freelance journalist, based in Sofia, Bulgaria. She has been reporting on a wide range of topics — from economic and political developments to social affairs and human rights issues. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Economist, and Politico Europe, among others.
Can Dündar has been working as a journalist for the last forty-two years, for several newspapers and magazines. He produced many TV documentaries focusing particularly on modern Turkish history and cultural anthropology. He worked as an anchorman for several news channels. He stepped down from his post as the editor in chief of the daily Cumhuriyet in August 2016, after he was imprisoned due to his story on the Turkish Intelligence Service’s involvement in the Syrian war. He was sentenced in absentia to twenty-seven years in jail in December 2020. He found #ÖZGÜRÜZRadio (WeAreFree) in Berlin in 2016. He has been a columnist for Die Zeit since August 2016. He has made documentaries for ARTE, ZDF, DW, and written more than forty books, some of which were published German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Albanian, and Chinese.
Twitter: @candundaradasi
Julia Vernersson is Managing Director of Hostwriter, an award-winning global network that helps journalists collaborate across borders. She has a background in international organisations working with media, freedom of speech, and activism and founded the organisation Kulturlabor Trial & Error. In 2021 Hostwriter launched the feminist cross-border newsroom UnbiastheNews.org, to support journalists experiencing structural barriers in the field, working towards a more equitable and inclusive world of journalism.
Twitter: @_headquarters
Lutz Kinkel represents and manages the ECPMF. Lutz worked in the German press for more than twenty years, giving special focus to the areas of politics and media. He was an editor at Spiegel-Online and tagesschau.de and more recently head of the stern-online office in Berlin. He did his master’s degree at Hamburg University in history, politics and economics. His dissertation examines the life of Nazi film director Leni Riefenstahl. Lutz teaches journalism at the Akademie für Publizistik, Hamburg.
Twitter: @l_kinkel
Neus Vidal is a journalist and political scientist. She is currently in charge of monitoring violations of press freedom at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom. She is also a Journalism Lecturer at the Open University of Catalonia and pursuing a PhD in Politics at Birkbeck College – University of London, focusing on transparency policies and access to information. Previously, she was a freelance reporter at El País and worked for several outlets in the United Kingdom and in Spain. Neus holds a double degree in Journalism and Political Science (Pompeu Fabra University Barcelona) and an Investigative Journalism master’s degree (City, University of London). She has been awarded with several grants such as the European Collaborative Journalism Programme 2021, Re:constitution fellowship 2019, and La Caixa Excellence fellowship 2014.
Twitter: @neusvidal
Anna Babinets is the editor-in-chief of SLIDSTVO.INFO investigative agency based in Kyiv, Ukraine and a regional editor of Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
As a journalist Anna specialises in discovering high scale corruption, money laundering schemes, and crimes. She is part of the Panama Papers team. Several stories about Ukrainian president`s Petro Poroshenko offshore companies were written by her. One of authors of Killing Pavel documentary, which is about the murder of a famous journalist in Kyiv. The documentary won a DIG Award (Italy) and IRE Medal (USA) in 2018.
Since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, Anna and Slidstvo.Info focus on covering war crimes, reporting from the fields (Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities), researching on and identifying Russian military members in Ukraine.
Twitter: @Anna_Babinets
Max von Abendroth is the Executive Director of Dafne – Donors and Foundations Networks in Europe, soon converging with EFC to become Philea, representing 10.000 public benefit foundations across Europe. Philea will host the Journalism Funders Forum. Max developed the interest representation of Europe’s philanthropy sector vis-à-vis the EU institutions to further strengthen the operating environment for donors and foundations across Europe. He is the initiator of PEX, a European collaboration network of more than 70 philanthropy infrastructure organisations. In 2020 he started the Philanthropy Coalition for Climate and co-created the International Philanthropy Commitment on Climate Change.
Before joining Dafne, Max set up and ran the European Magazine Media Association, EMMA, representing 15.000 press publishers vis-à-vis the EU institutions. He is also the founder of the Future Media Lab. (2012-2017), an innovative European advocacy platform for media, technology, journalism, academia and politicians.
Max studied Economics and Business Administration at the Witten/Herdecke University in Germany.
Twitter: @bxlmax
