Category: Speaker

Jochen Spangenberg is Deputy Head of Research and Cooperation Projects at Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle. The topical focus of his work over the past decade has been on social newsgathering, analysis, and verification of digital content, and relating all these to news reporting. He led the research projects REVEAL, InVID, and WeVerify for DW. He is DW’s product lead for Truly Media, a collaborative verification platform. Jochen lectures at the Free University Berlin in Media & Communication Sciences, is on the Advisory Board of EDMO (European Digital Media Observatory) and serves as Chairman of the CEDMO Advisory Board. He is the author of the book The BBC in Transition and a number of articles, papers and book chapters. Jochen supports Lie Detectors in its quest to bring media literacy into classrooms and raise awareness among young people on (news) media issues.

Twitter: @jospang , @WeVerify

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

Sarah Clarke joined ARTICLE 19 in January 2019 as Head of the Europe and Central Asia team, defending the human rights to freedom of expression and information in the region. Between 2012 and 2018, she led PEN International’s policy and advocacy work, overseeing its engagement with the UN and regional human rights mechanisms and governments. Sarah has consulted for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, OSCE, and Oxford and Harvard Universities on issues relating to freedom of expression, asylum and forced migration. She is a graduate of Oxford University, Trinity College Dublin and BPP Law School.

Twitter: @sarah_m_clarke

Pia Lindholm works as a Deputy Head of Unit for Civil Justice in Directorate-General Justice and Consumers of the European Commission. She studied law in Helsinki and London and economics in Brussels and trained as a judge in Finland. She joined the Commission in 1995 from the Finnish Ministry of Justice and started her career in the Commission’s Legal Service. She has worked in a number of different fields in the Commission before joining the Civil Justice Unit in 2017. She has followed the situation concerning SLAPP in the EU since 2018. She is currently working on the Commission’s SLAPP initiative.

Saranda Ramaj has been working at newspaper Koha Ditore since 2013. Her coverage includes public procurement, the justice system, and corruption in healthcare. Saranda systematically develops complex research in these fields unveiling irregularities, corruption and organised crime. With her stories, she also has prevented the signing of illegal tenders worth millions which were mainly policy-related businesses. In her nine years as a journalist, she has been awarded 14 prizes for investigative journalism.

Twitter: @saranda_ramaj

Rudi Bressa is an environmental and scientific freelance journalist, who collaborates with many Italian and international media outlets, focusing on climate change, energy transition, circular economy, and biodiversity conservation. He is a member of Swim (Science Writers in Italy), on the board of the Clew Journalism Network based in Berlin, and an associate of Oxpeckers investigative environmental journalism based in South Africa. His last investigations were focused on illegal wildlife and timber trade and were supported by the Journalism Fund and IJ4EU.

Twitter: @RudiBressa

Věra Jourová, Vice President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency 

Věra Jourová is currently Vice President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency and deals with democracy, rule of law, media pluralism and fight against disinformation. From 2014 to 2019, she served as EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality. In 2014, before arriving at the European Commission, Ms Jourová held the position of Minister for Regional Development in the Czech Republic. Previous to this, from 2006 to 2013, she worked in her own company as an international consultant on European Union funding and was also involved in consultancy activities in the Western Balkans relating to the European Union Accession. She holds a Degree in Law (Mgr.) and a master’s degree (Mgr.) in the Theory of Culture from the Charles University, Prague. 

Twitter: @VeraJourova