Teachers and Speakers

Andrew Jennings has worked for Sunday Times Insight, World In Action, BBC Panorama, CBS Sixty Minutes and a host of other UK and foreign networks and publications.

He has published five books, translated into 15 languages, in subjects ranging from corruption at Scotland Yard, to racketeering at the IOC and FIFA. He has reported from Beirut, Palermo, Nicaragua, Chechnya and other places long bombed and forgotten.

Currently he is the only reporter in the world banned by FIFA president Sepp Blatter and lectures at universities from Toronto to Otago about corruption, how to obtain confidential documents and then report their contents with a joyous heart. You can read his stories on his website: Transparency in Sport

Aron Pilhofer is editor of Interactive News at The New York Times.

His team blends journalism and technology to enhance The Times's reporting online through social media, community and data-driven web applications.

Prior to joining The Times, he reported for the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, Gannett newspapers in New Jersey and Delaware and was on the national training staff of Investigative Reporters and Editors. He is co-founder of DocumentCloud.org, a project designed to improve journalism by making source documents easier to find, search, analyse and share online and Hacks and Hackers, an organisation designed to bring journalists and technologists together.

Brendan Montague is a co-founder and executive director of Request Initiative.

He is an investigative journalist with more than a decade of experience having worked for The Sunday Times, The Mail on Sunday and The Daily Mail. Brendan is described by The Times as a “Freedom of Information expert”.

Caelainn Barr is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist, who has worked with the BBC, Financial Times, the Guardian and Al Jazeera.

She headed up the European data research team at the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism on a joint investigation with the FT into European structural funds.

The team produced the first and only centralised fund database to reveal the abuse of tax-payers’ money by the Mafia, multinational corporations and property developers. The results were published by the Financial Times and aired by BBC Radio 4 and Al Jazeera.

She has also used data analysis to uncover the misuse of expenses by the European Commission and human rights abuses in Ethiopia. She now works as a data journalist at the Irish Times.

Damien Spleeters is a freelance journalist from Belgium. He is covering armed conflicts, and investigating the proliferation of Belgian small arms

and the activities of Belgian arms brokers.

More informaion about Damien: http://about.me/damienspleeters and about his work: http://damspleet.com

David Donald is the data editor at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington.

One of the leading trainers in database journalism and digital reporting, David's interests include financial, housing and healthcare analysis and new tools for data analysis.

Prior to joining the Center in 2008, he served as training director at Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting for five years.

He focuses on data analysis to uncover fraud and governmental abuse. His stories have won three Batten Awards and two Hammet Awards for ethical and courageous journalism.

David Leigh is a journalist, author and documentary filmmaker, he is The Guardian's Investigations Editor and is one of the UK’s best-known investigative journalists.

He investigated BAE systems, revealing that the arms company paid £1bn to Saudi prince Bandar. After being the subject of criminal inquiries in the US, BAE has now admitted crimes connected to arms sales to Saudi Arabia, central Europe and Tanzania, and is to pay fines totalling $400m in the US and £30m in the UK.

Dr. Richard Stallman launched the free software movement in 1983 and started the development of the GNU operating system (see www.gnu.org) in 1984. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, with or without changes. The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux added, is used on tens of millions of computers today. Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award, and the the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several honorary doctorates.

Gavin Millar QC is founder member of the leading human rights practice, Doughty Street Chambers.

He is a practising barrister and a part-time judge. He specialises in media law, representing media organisations and journalists.

He is the co-author of Media Law and Human Rights. He has appeared in a number of high-profile cases resisting applications for source and document disclosure and contempt of court.

Ian Cobain has been a journalist for 30 years and is currently an investigative reporter with the Guardian.

His inquiries into the UK's involvement in rendition and torture since 9/11 have won a number of major awards, including the Martha Gellhorn Prize, the Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism, and a human rights award from Liberty.

He has also won a number of Amnesty International media awards. His book, Cruel Britannia, A Secret History of Torture, won the Debut Political Book of the Year award at the 2013 political book awards.

Jennifer LaFleur is the director for computer-assisted reporting at ProPublica.

She was previously the computer-assisted reporting editor for The Dallas Morning News, where she worked on the investigative team.

She has directed CAR at the San Jose Mercury News and at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and was Investigative Reporters and Editors' (IRE) first training director.

She has won awards for her coverage of disability, legal and open government issues. Jennifer is the co-author of IRE's Mapping for Stories: A Computer-Assisted Reporting Guide.

John Christensen directs the Tax Justice Network, an expert-led network which leads global efforts to tackle tax havens. Trained as a forensic investigator and economist, he has worked in many countries around the world, including secrecy jurisdictions, where he worked in offshore financial services with Touche Ross & Co. For 11 years he was economic adviser to the government of the British Channel Island of Jersey. In the past ten years he has become what the Guardian has described as “the unlikely figurehead of a worldwide campaign against tax avoidance.”

Katerina Cizek is an Emmy-winning documentary-maker working across many media platforms.

Her work has documented the Digital Revolution, and has itself become part of the movement. Currently, she is the director of the National Film Board of Canada's HIGHRISE project and for five years, she was the NFB’s Filmmaker-in-Residence (2008 Webby Award). Her previous award-winning films include Seeing is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News (2002, co-directed with Peter Wintonick). Cizek teaches and presents around the world about her innovative approach to the documentary genre.

Lucas Amin, is co-founder and operation's director of Request Initiative.

He graduated with a first class honours BA in media and communications at Goldsmiths College in 2010.

Since working for Request Initiative he has received training from the Campaign for Freedom of Information, PA consulting and the Guardian’s Masterclass in Investigative Journalism delivered by FoIA author Heather Brooke and the newspaper’s Special Projects Editor, Paul Lewis.

Luuk Sengers is an investigative environment reporter and journalism lecturer.

Together with Mark Lee Hunter he teaches the story-based inquiry method to reporters in newsrooms and at international conferences and summer schools.

Luuk worked for 16 years as a full-time reporter at national newspapers and magazines in The Netherlands (including NRC Handelsblad, business magazine Quote and the weekly Intermediair), before becoming an independent reporter and lecturer. He was on the board of the Dutch-Flemish Association of Investigative Journalists (VVOJ) for eight years and is a member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network.

Mark Lee Hunter is an adjunct professor and senior research fellow at INSEAD, based in the INSEAD Social Innovation Centre.

He is the only person to have won awards from Investigative Reporters and Editors, the world's leading organisation in the field, both for his investigative reports and for his research on journalism.

He is the author of over 100 investigative reports and six books, including (along with Luuke Sengers) The Hidden Scenario, the first in a series of handbooks for investigative journalists. The book was published by the CIJ with the support from the Reva and David Logan Foundation.

He is also a partner at Story-Based Inquiry Associates.

Mark Schapiro has been a long-time correspondent at the Center for Investigative Reporting specializing in international environmental stories. His work appears in magazines such as Harpers, The Atlantic, Yale 360 and Mother Jones and on television, including public television newsmagazine shows FRONTLINE/World, PBS NewsHour and KQED (San Francisco. He is currently writing a book (publication 2014) on the global struggle over assigning a price to carbon. His previous book, EXPOSED: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power revealed the health and economic implications for the United States of the tightening of environmental standards by the European Union. He has received numerous awards, including a Sigma Delta Chi from the Society of Professional Journalists, a DuPont, an Emmy and a Kurt Schork Award for International reporting.

Mark Willians-Thomas is a former police detective turned investigative journalist and TV presenter. Mark is the journalist behind ITV Expose: The other side of Jimmy Saville.

As an award winning investigative reporter he has worked on programmes for ITV Expose, ITV Tonight and BBC Newsnight. He is the presenter of the ITV series 'On the Run'.

In his previous career with the police serivce, Mark specialised in major crime and child protection, he has also covered and been an advisor in high-profile crimes over the past five years, including the death of Baby Peter, the murder of Joanna Yates, the Nursery Paedophile investigation and the Ipswich serial killer Steve Wright.

Martin Tomkinson is a veteran investigative financial journalist and corporate researcher.

From 2000-2004 he did the financial research for the Mail on Sunday’s Rich List and from 2005 to date he has worked on the Sunday Times' Rich List.

He has written for all the UK’s major newspapers. He started with Private Eye in 1972 and has worked as a freelance since 1981. He is the author of two books, Nothing to Declare: the Political Corruptions of John Poulson (with Michael Gillard) and The Pornbrokers: The Rise of the Soho Sex Barons.

Melanie McFadyean teaches part time in the journalism department at City University.

She has written or co written four books variously on Northern ireland, Margaret Thatcher, drugs and a book of short stories.She worked as an agony aunt at Just Seventeen magazine for three years in the early 1980s, at the Guardian on features for five years and has since freelanced with pieces for The Guardian, Independent, Sunday Times, Marie Claire, Elle, the LRB, Granta and many others.

She did several interviews for the CIJ Whistleblower project. She regularly does interviews for The Oldie, with people minimum age 70. She has also worked in TV and radio and recently completed a novel (and has no idea what will become of it.)

Paul Cheston is the courts correspondent of the London Evening Standard.

He covered his first court case for the Diss Express and, after training on the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette, came to Fleet Street to work for the Press Association in 1982.

He joined the short-lived London Daily News in 1987 and was in court on the final day of the Jeffrey Archer libel trial when owner Robert Maxwell closed the paper down.

After brief work for the Daily Star and Sunday Express he joined the Evening Standard as a general news reporter. He was appointed courts correspondent in 1993 and is co-author of Brothers in Blood published in 1994 and Court Scenes (2010)

Paul Connew is the former editor of the Sunday Mirror

During his career Paul has served as editor of the Sunday Mirror, deputy editor of the Daily Mirror as well as the News of the World and head of the US Bureau of Mirror Group Newspapers.

He is an award winning foreign correpsondent who is now widely known as a media commentator, used by the BBC, Sky, Al-Jazeera, CNN and Australian/Canadian/US & Russian broadcasters. He now also works as a PR adviser to various corporate, celebrity & charity clients.

After submitting written testimony to the Levenson Inquiry, he co-authored the book 'After Leveson' - a collection of views from both sides in the Leveson debate.

Paul Francis is political editor of The KM Group, Kent’s leading media company, where he is responsible for political coverage of the county at local and national level.

He is an award-winning journalist and has been named Kent Journalist of The Year three times. He was also named as weekly newspaper reporter of the year in the national Regional Press Awards in 2011.

He is acknowledged as a leading writer on local government affairs and as an expert in Freedom of Information. He has worked for the KM Group since 1995 and began his career in local newspapers in north London. He has written for The Guardian, Sunday Times and various local government magazines during his career.

He writes a regular blog for the KM Group and lectures on public affairs at the Centre for Journalism at the University of Kent. He is a member of the NCTJ’s Public Affairs board.

Paul Myers joined the BBC in 1995 as a news information researcher.

After moving to the corporation's training division in 1999, he coined the term "blended learning" and developed unique approaches to training and research methodology.

Having worked with computers since 1976, Paul has successfully introduced many technical tools into the world of journalism. He has also helped shape BBC editorial policy on internet research..

Away from training, he has produced online chatrooms, presented items for Watchdog and Click Online and has provided assistance to Panorama, Radio Five Live and many other news, current affairs and consumer programmes.

Raj Bairoliya is a well known forensic accountant and has been teaching "How to Read Company Accounts" at CIJ for over 10 years. He also holds a number of intensive weekend courses for CIJ. He frequently assists journalists and broadcasters decipher the accounting/business aspect of their stories.

Raj has specialised in forensic accounting investigations for nearly 25 years and has investigated many of the high profile failures over this period. He is retained by law firms as well as law enforcement and regulatory agencies.

In 2000 he set up an independent specialist forensic accounting firm, Forensic Accounting LLP. This firm, having grown to be the biggest independent forensic firm in the UK, was acquired by a US listed firm in 2008. He has recently left after serving his tie-in period and is currently on a sabbatical during his year's non-compete and is looking forward to being an independent forensic accountant again.

Richard Brooks is a reporter with Private Eye magazine, writing mainly for the In the Back section.

In 2008 he won the Paul Foot award for work on a privatisation scandal at Britain's international development fund, CDC.He is a former tax inspector and has exposed tax avoidance at some of Britain's biggest companies, including the Vodafone scheme that sparked the UK Uncut protests.

He was a member of the Guardian's Tax Gap team in 2009 and also co-authored a report with ActionAid on tax avoidance in the developing world by British brewing company SABMiller.Richard recently wrote a book on Britain's tax avoidance epidemic and the government's complicity in it,