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
Timothy Large is Director of Independent Media Programmes at International Press Institute. He is an award-winning journalist, editor and media development specialist who runs the IJ4EU programme for IPI, which leads the IJ4EU consortium. Before joining IPI in 2020, he was Founding Editor of the Reporting Democracy cross-border journalism platform and Editor of the Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence at the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. Prior to that, he was Director of Reuters media development programmes, setting up independent news services in countries in transition, Editor-in-Chief of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Editor of the Reuters AlertNet global humanitarian news service, and a Reuters correspondent.
Twitter: @timothylarge
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
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
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
Geesje van Haren has run her own media organisation VersPers for over eighteen years. Geesje is the driving force of the Lost in Europe project and leads a growing team of journalists in Europe. She coordinates the research on the ground, brings the team together, works in the field, and is responsible for fundraising. Geesje also has extensive experience as a media producer in the Netherlands and teaches investigative journalism, entrepreneurship, and photography. She is also founder of the private school for investigative journalism Open Eyes Amsterdam.
