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
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
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
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
Nico Schmidt is part of the European journalistic team “Investigate Europe.” As an investigative reporter, he has lately dug into the failed state of military integration in the EU as well as the effects of the little known Energy Charter Treaty on the EU’s ambitions to phase out fossil fuels. For this work he was recently nominated for the German Reporterpreis.
Charlie Holt works as legal counsel for campaigns at Greenpeace International, where he leads the organisation’s SLAPP resilience strategy. Until 2019 his work focused on the US, where he worked on two aggressive large-scale SLAPPs targeting Greenpeace and helped set up the anti-SLAPP coalition Protect the Protest. He is now working on building SLAPP resilience in Europe through the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE). As well as coordinating the work of CASE and co-chairing a UK Working Group on SLAPPs, Charlie sits on the European Commission’s Expert Group on SLAPPs. Charlie is a member of the Bar of England & Wales and holds an LL.M. degree in international human rights law.
Twitter: @holt_charlie
