Board

Isabel Hilton – Chair

Isabel Hilton has reported from China, South Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, written and presented several documentaries for BBC radio and television, and has been a writer or editor for The Sunday Times, the Independent and the Guardian. She’s Founder and Senior Adviser of The China Dialogue Trust of www.chinadialogue.net, an innovative, fully bilingual Chinese English website devoted to building a shared approach on climate change and environmental issues with China.

Alf Hill – Treasurer

Alf Hill is an accountant with extensive experience in the public and private sectors. Following graduate recruitment as a civil servant he worked in the insurance and reinsurance industry as a company director in the corporate sector and Lloyd’s of London, chairing the tax committee of the Association of British Insurers. Changing careers, he worked in adult education before leading up finance and resources at the Equal Opportunities Commission and onto its transition as part of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. He has mentored early stage social entrepreneurs as part of UnLtd, chairs Storm Skills Training CiC, providing training in self harm and suicide prevention and is or has been trustee of social benefit and environmental charities, including Keep Britain Tidy.

Barbora Bukovska

Since 2009, she has been a Senior Director for Law and Policy at ARTICLE 19, an international free speech organisation. In this capacity, she has been leading on the development of all ARTICLE 19 policies and legal work, covering a broad range of freedom of expression issues (e.g. protest, protection of journalists, digital technologies, internet and telecommunication infrastructure, right to information, hate speech and many others). She is also overseeing legal support to ARTICLE 19 offices in Mexico, Brazil, USA, Kenya, Senegal, Tunisia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Kazakhstan and international operations, hence offering not only substantive expertise but also global expertise and experience. Prior to ARTICLE 19, Barbora worked with various organisations on a range of human rights issues, including protection from discrimination, access to justice, deprivation of liberty, reproductive rights and community development. She also initiated about 50 cases at the European Court of Human Rights on these issues and has published a number of reports and articles on a broad range of human rights.

Iona Craig

Iona Craig is a British-Irish freelance investigative journalist. Since 2010 her work has focused on Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula. Her work from Yemen has won six awards including the 2016 Orwell Prize for journalism as well as the 2016 Kurt Schork Memorial Award for international journalism. In 2014 she received the Martha Gellhorn Prize and the Frontline Club award for print journalism, for her undercover investigative reporting. In addition to Yemen, Iona has reported from Djibouti, Turkey, Lebanon, Washington DC and the Occupied Territories.

Gill Phillips

Gill Phillips is a media law specialist. She currently works in-house as the Director of Editorial Legal Services for Guardian News & Media Limited (publishers of the Guardian and Observer newspapers and guardian.co.uk). She advises on a range of content-related matters including defamation, privacy, contempt of court and reporting restrictions. In 1987, she escaped from private practice, joining the BBC as an in-house lawyer dealing with pre and post publication and litigation matters. Between 1996/7 she was an in-house lawyer at News Group Newspapers (The Sun & The News of the World) before moving, in 1997, to the College of Law, where she lectured in Civil and Criminal Litigation and Employment. In 2000, she joined Times Newspapers Limited (publishers of The Times and The Sunday Times) as an in-house editorial lawyer. In May 2009, she moved to Guardian News & Media Limited. She was a member of the Ministry of Justice’s Working Group on Libel Reform. She was involved in the Trafigura super injunction case, and has been involved in advising GNM publications on Wikileaks, Edward Snowden, and various big data leak stories such as the Panama and Paradise Papers. She also sits as a part-time Employment Tribunal Judge and co-authors the University of Law Employment Law handbook.

Martin Tomkinson

Martin Tomkinson is a veteran investigative financial journalist and corporate researcher. He was a financial researcher for The Mail on Sunday‘s ‘Rich List’ from 2000-2004 and has worked on The Sunday Times‘ ‘Rich List’ since 2005. Martin has written for all the UK’s major newspapers. He started work 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.

Stefania Spezzati

Stefania Spezzati is an award-winning reporter covering European banking at Reuters. Based in London, she chronicles all things finance, breaks news and digs deep into the world’s biggest banks. Prior to joining Reuters, Stefania spent about a decade at Bloomberg News. In 2022, she co-led a data-driven investigation which exposed how over 130 million pounds in taxpayer-backed loans went to firms with dubious credentials. The story won at the British Journalism Awards in Crime and Legal Affairs Journalism.

 

 

Miranda McLachlan – Board Observer

Miranda McLachlan has worked as a professional journalist, multi-platform content producer and digital news products specialist over the past 25 years. Miranda has principally worked for international and national news organisations, most recently working for The Times of London on its newspaper and digital products in 2006-12 as a journalist and news editor. She has also written and edited for The Sunday Telegraph, Independent on Sunday, Daily Express, the Australian Financial Review and Herald Sun. Miranda has also worked as a TV and radio producer and correspondent as well as a sound engineer.

Miranda has worked as an academic – lecturing in multi-platform journalism, new media and politics – for a range of universities including Coventry University, Middlesex University and the University of Gloucestershire – teaching both theory and practice on journalism undergraduate degrees through to Masters in Global Media and Communications and Global Journalism. She joined Goldsmiths, University of London in 2013 and is currently a senior lecturer and convenor of the MA/MSc Digital Journalism. It is the first programme of its type (teaching computational skills) in the UK having been launched in 2012.