#CIJSummer 2026: First Speakers Announced

#CIJSummer features some of the best speakers and trainers from the UK and internationally. We are delighted to welcome some of the confirmed speakers for 2026.

NEW this year!

Catrin Nye – an award-winning Welsh investigative journalist, documentary maker, and presenter for the BBC, who will speak about investigating a cult and getting harassed.

Fola Folayan – a communications strategist, media entrepreneur, and cross-border journalism advocate, who will deliver a workshop on the new methods of engagement strategies for big impact.

Danylo Mokryk – a reporter with the War Crimes Investigations Unit of the Kyiv Independent, who will talk about new ways of investigating war crimes in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

Jim Waterson – the founder of London Centric, who will speak about local journalism start-ups and London Centric’s investigation into the viral videos falsely claiming that London homes are being given to the “boat people”. Who is behind the account that spreads anti-immigrant hate?

John Mooney – an investigative journalist with the Sunday Times, and Connor Plunkett, an investigator at Bellingcat, who will share their investigation into the Kinahan cartel.

Marta Portocarrero – a multimedia producer at Investigate Europe, who will deliver a multimedia storytelling workshop.

Thomas Barlow – founder of the Independent Media Association, who will deliver a workshop on making a living as a freelancer.

Returning to #CIJSummer

Aditi Tandon – a Senior Production Editor at Mongabay India, who will share the tools on how to track and counteract growing misinformation about climate change.

Jonathan Stoneman, Helena Bengtsson and Pamela Duncan are on this year’s data journalism training team, bringing you the necessary hands-on data skills: spreadsheets, R and Python.

Raj Baroliya – a forensic accountant, who will teach a four-part Understanding Company Accounts Course.

Jenna Corderoy will be teaching how to successfully make Freedom of Information Act Requests.

Guy Porter will once again teach the basics of Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT).

Luuk Sengers and Dr Mark Lee Hunter are back with #CIJSummer’s very popular Story-Based Inquiry Method.

Watch this space! The speakers page will be updated regularly.

Catrin Nye

Catrin Nye is an investigative journalist with the BBC. She specialises in long-form documentary journalism and her career has seen her investigate financial exploitation, the chemicals industry and sexual abuse.

Fola Folayan

Fola Folayan is a communications strategist, media entrepreneur, and cross border journalism advocate who designs audience-centered storytelling systems that help newsrooms grow reach, trust, and sustainability.

Danylo Mokryk

Danylo Mokryk is a reporter with the War Crimes Investigations Unit of the Kyiv Independent. He has previously worked as an investigative journalist with Bihus.Info. His 2022 investigation into Russian acts of genocide in Ukraine won the “Honor of the Profession” Ukrainian journalism award.

Jim Waterson

Jim Waterson had his dream job as media editor of the Guardian, reporting on what information people were consuming — and why. Then, disturbed by the news industry's failure to appreciate the shift in public consumption, he quit to found a local news start-up.

John Mooney

John Mooney is an investigative journalist with The Sunday Times whose work spans politics, organised crime, terrorism and the malign activities of hostile states. He is also an academic researcher and the author of several books on crime and violent republicanism.

Connor Plunkett

Connor Plunkett is an investigator at Bellingcat, where his work has focussed on organised crime.

Thomas Barlow

Thomas Barlow is founder of the Independent Media Association, Real Media and Strategic Director at Impress Media Services. He does business development consultancy for independent media and civil society organisations, alongside sectoral initiatives like building aggregators, lobbying key decision makers and negotiating with Big Tech.

Marta Portocarrero

Marta Portocarrero is a multimedia producer at Investigate Europe,. Marta studied Digital Journalism in London (2014). Since then, she has been working as a multimedia journalist in the UK and Latin America.

Aditi Tandon

Aditi Tandon is a Senior Production Editor at Mongabay India, an environment and conservation news portal. She has worked for over two decades in journalism and communications.

Jenna Corderoy

Jenna Corderoy is an investigative reporter for Democracy for Sale, a newsletter dedicated to revealing how dark money and hidden influence threaten our democracy. She specialises in obtaining documents under the Freedom of Information Act, and has brought several successful FOIA challenges at tribunal.

Jonathan Stoneman

Jonathan Stoneman is a freelance trainer specialising in data journalism. He has been working with data since 2010. Before that he worked at the BBC – as a reporter, producer, editor of output in Macedonian and Croatian, and finally as head of training at BBC World Service.

Helena Bengtsson

Helena Bengtsson is the data journalism editor at Gota Media and Bonnier News Local, two regional publishing companies in Sweden with 55 local titles. She previously worked as the data journalism editor at Sveriges Television, Sweden’s national television broadcaster, for 27 years and has also served as Editor, Data Projects of the Guardian UK between […]

Pamela Duncan

Pamela Duncan is the former editor of the Guardian's Data Projects team, an occasional award-winning journalist (#humblebrag) and a self-confessed data nerd. She is at her happiest (professionally at least) when poring over spreadsheets and using her coding skills – usually a combination of scraping, regex and pandas/Python – to build and analyse datasets to produce high quality and exclusive data stories.

Raj Bairoliya

Raj Bairoliya is a well-known expert forensic accountant and has been teaching Understanding Company Accounts at the CIJ for many years. Raj frequently helps journalists and broadcasters to decipher the accounting and business aspects of a story.

Guy Porter

Guy Porter has a background in digital investigations, data analysis and research for campaign organisations Global Witness, Avaaz and Purpose, and training and development for the CIJ, Public Media Alliance and Goldsmiths, University of London.

Luuk Sengers

Luuk Sengers is an experienced teacher and investigative journalist. He lectures at universities and in newsrooms and writes data-driven stories for the leading Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer. He is also the co-developer of Story-Based Inquiry.

Mark Lee Hunter

Dr Mark Lee Hunter is a founding member of The Global Investigative Journalism Network, the principal author of Story-Based Inquiry: A Manual for Investigative Journalists (UNESCO 2009 and 2025) and the recipient of many awards for his reporting.

Published: 26 Mar 2026