Category: Speaker-23

Deniz Bozkurt is the event and IJ4EU programme manager at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom since 2022. She organises the UNCOVERED Conference and #IJ4EU Impact Award. Previously, she worked as a research associate at various interdisciplinary institutions in Leipzig. She holds a doctorate degree in American Studies from Leipzig University. She is a mother of two cats.

Twitter: @DenizBozkurtP

Jesse Pinster is a Brussels-based journalist who has been reporting on the European Union for eight years. Currently he is part of the Brussels Bureau of the Dutch investigative platform Follow the Money. His research and publications cover climate and trade policy and political parties and think tanks in Europe. Follow the Money has been steadily expanding its team in Brussels which covers EU-related topics, initiates cross border projects and publishes in both Dutch and English.

Twitter: @jessepinster

Lise Witteman is team lead of the EU desk of investigative journalism platform Follow the Money. Our Brussels based team specialises in (data driven) investigations into EU affairs, such as the Recovery Files investigation. In the run up to the European elections of 2024 we have some great new investigations in mind for which we seek journalists from all member states to collaborate with.

Twitter: @LiseWitteman

Giulia Lucchese works at the Media and Internet Governance Division, Information Society Department, of the Council of Europe. She is the Secretary to the Expert Committee on Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation, tasked to draft a Council of Europe Recommendation on countering the use of SLAPPs. She carries out standard-setting activities in the field of freedom of expression, with a focus on the safety of journalists and hate speech.

Twitter: @GiuliaLucchese

Frane Maroević is the executive director at International Press Institute. He brings to this position over 30 years experience in journalism, media development and press freedom. He developed his passion for journalism and learned the skills, professional standards and values of this profession at the BBC World Service in London. In post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina he worked on the reform of public broadcasting, media regulation and managed donor support for independent media. As the director of the office of the OSCE media freedom representative, he managed responses to numerous cases of media freedom violations in 57 countries that are part of this intergovernmental organization. Just before joining IPI, his work at the Internet and Jurisdiction Policy Network and the Freedom Online Coalition Advisory Network focused on threats to online freedom of expression.

Twitter: @Frane_M

Pierre Romera Zhang has been Chief Technology Officer at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 2017. He manages a team working on the platforms that enabled more than hundreds journalists to collaborate on the Pandora Papers, the Uber Files, the FinCEN Files, or the Panama Papers. Before that, he co-founded Journalism++, the franco-German data journalism agency behind The Migrant Files, a project that won the European Press Prize in 2015 for Innovation. He is one of the pioneers of data journalism in France.

Twitter: @pirhoo

As a former freelance investigative journalist and with over 10 years of professional project management experience, Coco Gubbels shares techniques for coordinating and facilitating an investigative team like a pro. She studied cultural anthropology and understands the benefits and pitfalls of multicultural and multidisciplinary teams.
She realised that her knowledge and skills would fill a gap in the development of this new type of investigation as the number of collaborating journalists grew. She is committed to supporting the development of robust cross-border investigations and assisting team coordinators to ensure that the team can focus on the investigation.

Twitter: @PostVanCoco

Iliana Papangeli is the managing director of Solomon, an investigative non-profit newsroom based in Greece. She has been nominated for the European Press Prize ’21 and won the IJ4EU Impact Award ’22. She has participated in several cross-border investigations and her work has been published in media across Europe. She has served as a jury at the IJ4EU Impact Award 2023 and the Evens Journalism Prize 2021. She has a background in Psychology and Social Anthropology.

Twitter: @IPapangeli, @we_are_solomon

Camille Petit works as a Communications and Project officer at the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) in Brussels. She studied journalism in France and holds a master’s degree in European studies from La Sorbonne Nouvelle. Prior to joining the EFJ in 2016, she worked as a journalist for different regional media outlets.

Twitter: @CamilleMPetit, @EFJEUROPE