Category: Speaker

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

Jörg Wojahn is the Head of Representation of the European Commission in Berlin, Germany since September 2019. Formerly the Head of the European Commission’s Representation in Austria, Wojahn is a highly experienced professional in the area of communications and diplomacy.

Mr Wojahn holds a PhD in Public International Law from the University of Kiel, Germany. He obtained his law degree from the University of Passau in Germany and also studied at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. After spending a few years at the Court of Appeal in Baden Baden in Germany, he chose to pursue a career in journalism and communications and became Der Standard’s EU and NATO correspondent and foreign affairs reporter in Vienna and then in Brussels.

Mr Wojahn joined the European Commission in 2004, when he became the spokesperson of the European Anti-Fraud Office. In 2010, he moved to the EU Delegation for Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain in Riyadh, serving as Counsellor for Trade Affairs in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. He took up the role of Head of the European Commission’s Representation in Vienna in September 2015.

Twitter: @JorgWojahn

Jelena Prtoric is a freelance journalist who has reported for a wide variety of publications in English, French, Italian, and her native Croatian. Her work has focused on gender and human rights, migration, the environment/climate, culture and social movements, through an investigative and (often) cross-border lens. As of 2020, Jelena has been the Arena Climate Network coordinator for Arena for Journalism in Europe, a non-profit organisation. She is also an occasional podcaster and translator of graphic novels. In 2022, Jelena is a Bertha Challenge Fellow and is working on in-depth research into the quality of water in Europe, focusing on agricultural pollution of water bodies.

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

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.

Annie Hylton is an award-winning investigative journalist and magazine writer from Canada. Through long-form narrative writing, she seeks to create empathy and illustrate the human stakes behind key policy debates. She has been published by The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New Republic, London Review of Books, Esquire UK, The Walrus, and many others. She is an associate professor at Sciences Po Paris, where she teaches investigative journalism, writing, and reporting. She is trained as an international human rights lawyer focusing on situations of conflict.

Twitter: @hyltonanne