Category: Speaker

Lars Boering is the director of the European Journalism Centre, an independent European non-profit working to support, strengthen, and develop journalism. In previous roles he has been actively involved with journalism, photography, and art. He was the managing director of the Amsterdam Art Foundation. In 2008 became an independent advisor and entrepreneur. As managing director of the Dutch Photographers’ Association, from 2010 to 2014, Lars advised photojournalists on copyright issues and entrepreneurial skills. As of 2015 he led the World Press Photo Foundation and has transformed it into an organisation that is more than a contest, becoming a global platform connecting professionals and audiences through trustworthy visual journalism, and storytelling. He has taught at academies throughout the world and been involved as advisor for festivals, contests, and other institutions. He is an experienced keynote speaker and moderator who believes lifelong learning is a necessity and a joy.

Twitter: @larsboering

Giacomo Zandonini is a Swiss-Italian journalist whose work explores mobility, identities, and European policies in the Mediterranean and West Africa. He contributed to investigations on human rights violations, surveillance programmes, corruption and diversion of public funds. He’s a member of Fada Collective and takes part in Lighthouse Reports’ migration and surveillance newsrooms.

Twitter: @giacomo_zando

Scott Griffen joined International Press Institute in 2012 as a press freedom adviser focusing on Latin America and the Caribbean. Currently, as the deputy director, he helps manage IPI’s long-term project work and press freedom advocacy and oversees IPI’s external and internal communications. He holds a bachelor’s degree in humanities from Yale University and a master’s degree in global ethics from King’s College London.

Twitter: @scott_f_griffen

Stefano Vergine is an Italian investigative journalist focusing on economics and foreign affairs. He mainly writes for Il Fatto Quotidiano. His works are published also by other media outlets such as RAI, Euobserver.com, RSI, BBC. The investigation “Chinese Underworld” has been conducted by Info.Libre, Il Fatto Quotidiano and Info.Nodes. The video has been made by Visionair Prod.

Twitter: @StefanoVergine

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

Roman Dobrokhotov was born 1983 in Moscow, graduated from Moscow State Institute of International Relations, and has a PhD in political science. He started to work as a journalist in 2005. In 2013, he founded the online internet magazine The Insider focusing on investigations and debunking of fake news. The Insider won many international awards for its investigations.

Twitter: @Dobrokhotov

Sanita Jemberga is editor in the Baltic Center of Investigative Journalism “Re:Baltica,” which is based in Riga but works across the Baltics and beyond (mostly in ex-USSR countries but also on OCCRP and ICIJ investigations). Re:Baltica is a non-profit, which produces journalism in public interest in Latvian, English, and Russian since 2011. Sanita was lead editor in IJ4EU-supported investigation “Belarus Sanction Busters,” where journalists from Estonia (Delfi), Latvia (Re:Baltica), Lithuania (Siena), and Belarus (BIC) exposed people fronting interests of sanctioned Belarussian oligarchs and circumventing EU sanctions.

Twitter: @jemberga

Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck is the founder and Executive Director of Lie Detectors, an award-winning organisation that works with more than 250 professional journalists to promote critical media literacy among schoolchildren and teachers. She directs Lie Detectors’ development and strategy and designed its concept and training approach. Juliane advises the European Union institutions, including within the EU Expert Group on Digital Literacy and  High Level Expert Group on Digital Disinformation and Fake News. She has advised politicians and lawmakers on anti-radicalisation and lateral literacy in an age of media pluralism. To create Lie Detectors, Juliane put aside an award-winning journalism career, during which she wrote for The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Reuters, MLex, and Spiegel Online among others, reporting from Europe and the US as well as from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Arctic. She is an alumna of New York City’s Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Edinburgh. She speaks German, English, Spanish and French.

Twitter: @LieDetectorsOrg