Speakers

Helena Bengtsson

Helena Bengtsson has worked for 20 years at the Swedish Television´s unit for news and current affairs program, as a researcher, editor and database editor. 2014-2017 she was editor for the Data Projects team at the Guardian in London, 2006-07 she worked as database editor at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, DC. She has received Stora Journalistpriset (the Swedish Great Prize for Journalism) twice, 2010 for Valpejl.se and 2016 as the Innovator of the Year.

Derek Willis

Derek Willis is a news applications developer at ProPublica, focusing on politics and elections. He previously worked as a developer and reporter at The New York Times, a database editor at The Washington Post, and at the Center for Public Integrity. He is a co-founder of OpenElections, a project to collect and publish election results from all 50 states. ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom for investigative journalism based in New York.

Megan Lucero

Megan Lucero is director of The Bureau Local at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London. The Bureau Local was launched 2017 to support data-driven investigative reporting at a regional level. Megan, formerly the Data Editor at The Times and Sunday Times, was part of the first data journalism team at The Times and led its development from a small supporting unit to a key component of investigations. She spearheaded the paper’s political data unit ahead of the 2015 General Election — making it the only one in the industry to reject polling data ahead of the vote. Using computational method, her team brought many issues into the public eye and won awards for revealing the widespread use of blood doping in the Olympics.

Fergus Bell

Fergus Bell is an experienced multi-format journalist, editor and leading expert in digital newsgathering and the verification of user-generated content. He previously headed up newsroom partnerships and innovation for digital newsgathering start-up, SAM Desk, and before that he was International Social Media and UGC (User Generated Content) Editor for the Associated Press in London. He is also the founder of news consultancy Dig Deeper Media and was involved in Electionland, one of the biggest newsgathering projects ever at the 2016 US election.

Miranda Patrucić

Based in Sarajevo, Miranda Patrucic is an investigative reporter and regional editor for Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) focusing on Central Asia, the Balkans and the Caucasus. Highlights of her work include exposing billions in telecom bribes in Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, uncovering hidden assets of Azerbaijan’s and Montenegro’s ruling elites, the €1.2 billion arms trade between Europe and Gulf fueling conflicts in the Middle East, and ties between organized crime, government and business in Montenegro. She collaborated with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on a project involving tobacco smuggling, the US$ 4 billion black market in endangered bluefin tuna, Swiss Leaks and Panama Papers. She is the recipient of the Knight International Journalism Award, the Global Shining Light Award, the IRE Tom Renner Award, the Daniel Pearl Award and the European Press Prize. She is much in demand worldwide for training journalists on how to investigate and uncover corruption, money laundering and how to follow the money.

Kristoffer Örstadius

An investigative reporter and “hacker-journalist” at Dagens Nyheter, Kristoffer Örstadius has been praised for his in-depth reporting about THE Swedish school system, the housing crisis and immigration. In 2017, he revealed serious flaws in IT security at the Swedish Transport Agency, which led to the resignation of the Home Secretary. Örstadius received the Swedish Grand Prize for Journalism 2015 as  “Innovator of the Year” for using programming “in a renewing and inspiring way for Journalism” and has also twice received Guldspaden (“the Golden Shovel”), for outstanding investigative reporting by the Swedish Association for Investigative Reporters.

Linnea Heppling

Linnea Heppling is editor for the visual data journalism team at SVT, Sweden’s national television broadcaster. She has worked for SVT since 2011, as a data journalist and editor. She and her team have won the Nordic Data Journalism Awards twice.

Jens Finnäs

Jens Finnäs is a data journalist at J++, Stockholm, an international team of data journalism specialists. The team integrates experts in research, data analysis, data-driven storytelling, newsroom programming and full-stack design. Since 2015 J++ has been giving courses in Python programming for journalists in Stockholm.

Leo Wallentin

Leo Wallentin is a data journalist at J++, Stockholm, an international team of data journalism specialists. The team integrates experts in research, data analysis, data-driven storytelling, newsroom programming and full-stack design. Since 2015 J++ has been giving courses in Python programming for journalists in Stockholm.

Walid Al-Saqaf

Walid Al-Saqaf is a senior lecturer in journalism and media technology at Södertörn University in Stockholm where he specialises in data journalism. He worked in journalism for over 8 years during which he wrote for The Yemen Times, The Wall Street Journal, Gulf News and others. Walid holds a B.Sc. degree in computer engineering and a master and PhD in media and communication. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society and is the Chair of the Middle East Strategic Working Group of ICANN. Walid is also a software developer and created Alkasir for website censorship circumvention and Mecodify for data analysis and visualisation. He actively advocates the use technology to advance journalism, democracy and free speech.

Tommy Kaas

Tommy Kaas is editor of Kaas & Mulvad, who specializes in finding news and patterns in complex data and presenting the results online. Tommy has many years of experience from a number of Danish media and from training Data Journalism, including as lecturer at the Journalism Programme at Roskilde University. He is also co-founder of Foreningen for Computerstøttet Journalistik1997 and DICAR 1999.

Teemo Tebest

Teemo Tebest (@teelmo) is an awarded Finnish data journalist. He has been working at the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle since 2012. His interests are visual storytelling, data analysis and open data. He emphasizes the collaboration between professionals.

Katrine Birkedal Frich

Editor at the investigative data team at DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation). She has been working as a data journalist for more than a decade and has lead the first data desk in Denmark since 2013.

Jens Holm

Journalist looking into the affairs of the Danish municipalities at the independent paper kommunen.dk. Obsessed with writing articles and telling stories using interactive maps and charts often based on crunched numbers and bits of information gathered by scraping the web or FOIA.

Malin Ekholm

Malin Ekholm is editor at the data team at Swedish YLE in Helsinki.

Esa Mäkinen

Esa Mäkinen is head of development, data & interactives at Helsingin Sanomat, also a maker of twitterbots and a novelist.

Magnus Bjerg

Magnus Bjerg is digital project manager at the editorial development team at Danish Broadcaster TV 2 Danmark. He has extensive experience with digital tools for journalism and is the President of the Danish Online News Association (DONA) and Jury Member for NODA Awards and Spadestiksprisen.

Helena Löfving

Helena Löfving has been working as a journalist for more than 20 years, as reporter, news editor, digital specialist and researcher at newspapers and Swedish Television. She has found a model for integrating data journalism into newsrooms, and she also teaches how to use free tools for analysis and visualization. 2016 she won the Best data journalism award from Open Knowledge Awards Sweden.

Espen Sørmo Strømme

Espen Sørmo Strømme is assistant professor in journalism at NLA, Gimlekollen, Kristiansand, Norway. He is the author of the book «Økonomijournalistikk» (economic journalism), and teach digital journalism as well. His most recent endeavour is to create a media lab for data driven journalism In Norway in collaboration with the newspapers Fædrelandsvennen and Nettavisen.

Fredrik Laurin

Fredrik Laurin is currently a special projects editor at Swedish Television and a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Reporters, ICIJ. From year 2000-2014, he worked in team together with Sven Bergman and Joachim Dyfvermark, producing investigative stories for the TV4 and from 2006 for the investigative programme “Uppdrag granskning” at SVT – Swedish Television. In 2014 Fredrik Laurin became the head of the investigative team at Swedish Radio, SR Ekot, but was recruited back to SVT in 2015. Fredrik Laurin has received multiple awards, among them Stora Journalistpriset (The Swedish Grand Prize for Journalism) and the Daniel Pearl Award. He lectures on investigative journalism techniques and source protection in the digitalized world.

Linda Larsson Kakuli

Linda Larsson Kakuli is a researcher for the news department at SVT, the Swedish public service television company. As a researcher, she worked on several big global stories, as Panama & Paradise Papers and she’s been awarded Guldspaden (the golden shovel) twice and nominated to Stora Journalistpriset (the Swedish Grand Prize for Journalism). In 2007 she received the Ludvig Nordström-prize for her inspirational work. Linda Larsson Kakuli is part of a new team at SVT for advanced data journalism, together with Helena Bengtsson and she previously worked as a researcher for investigative programmes Striptease, Faktum and Uppdrag Granskning, all at Swedish Television. Linda Larsson Kakuli is also a popular lecturer on research, data bases and Excel.

Kresten Roland Johansen

Kresten Roland Johansen is lecturer in data journalism, basic statistics and quantitative methodology at the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Denmark. Since 2004, working with surveys and news with numbers, initially at DICAR – Danish Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting. Author of the book “En ny undersøgelse viser – eller gør den?”.

Teemu Henriksson

Teemu Henriksson is the Director of the Data Journalism Den, the global hub dedicated to data journalism by the Global Editors Network. Previously he worked as project coordinator and researcher at the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), where he was responsible for the World Press Trends research project, and contributed to the organisation’s media policy activities. His other experience ranges from journalism and event organisation to media development project coordination.

Lotta Sima

Lotta Sima works as a researcher at the Swedish Television´s unit for news and current affairs since 2000. She has previously worked with statistics at SCB (Statistics Sweden) and teaches journalists in statistics, processing statistics databases and Excel. Lotta Sima is co-author of the books “Statistik i nyheterna” (Statistics in the News).

Sandra Foresti

Sandra Foresti is a lecturer in research and investigative journalism at JMG, the department of Journalism, Media and Communication at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. She is also responsible for the department’s two data journalism courses. She previously worked as a journalist and researcher at several Swedish broadcasting newsrooms for more than ten years. She has been awarded “Guldspaden”, the Swedish award for investigative journalism.

Carl-Gustav Lindén

Carl-Gustav Lindén is docent in journalism and media development at the Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki and affiliate associate professor at Södertörn University. He worked as a business journalist and editor for more than two decades before moving in to academia. He now leads the R&D project Immersive Automation where computer scientists with media and journalism researchers are exploring the opportunities for news automation. He campaigns against using the “robot journalism” metaphor.

Hillevi Hägglöf

Hillevi Hägglöf is a computational linguist and a data scientist at Bonnier News. She is especially interested in automated journalism and natural language generation.

Ahmed El Gody

Ahmed El Gody, Ph.D. Senior Lecturer Media and communication Studies, Örebro University Sweden. He is the author of Journalism in a Network: Role of ICTs in Egyptian Newsrooms. He also authored a number of book chapters and journal articles on political communication in the Middle East, freedom of the press, censorship, social media and democracy and new media and convergence.

Jani Pirttisalo Sallinen

Investigative/news reporter at Svenska Dagbladet (national daily), Sweden. Working with news focused on national security, cybersecurity, information security, society and science (usually on the Nobel Prize). Experienced in using data journalistic methods, social media research, encryption methods. Often working in investigative projects; which today include a database investigation on payments from big pharmaceutical companies to swedish doctors, security leaks from the swedish national bank (Riksbanken), minors leaving Sweden for ISIS (together with Aftonbladet), database investigation/comparison on lethal gang violence in the nordic countries to name a few. Former winner of Guldspaden, ”The Golden Shovel”, from the swedish Association of Investigative Journalists (FGJ).(Foto: Tomas Oneborg/SvD)

Joachim Kerpner

Joachim Kerpner has been working as journalist for 30 years. Today he is an investigative reporter and data journalist at Aftonbladet. He won Schibsted Journalism Awards 2017 in the category Best Innovative entry with ”Klassresan” (”The social mobility journey”). In 2013 he was nominated for the Nordic data Journalism Awards in the category Storytelling with the film ”Klyftan mellan fattiga och rika” (”The gap between the poor and the rich”).

Alla Rybina

As a PhD candidate at Gothenburg University, Alla explores the concept of data journalism while focusing her research on journalistic professionalism and identity, the future of journalism, journalistic culture and new practices/dynamics of journalism production. The overall goal of her doctoral research is to explore the potential of data journalism in contributing to democratic development. For several years, Alla worked as a reporter for the Interfax news agency in Moscow, Russia. After moving to Sweden, she blogged for Örebro University and worked as a reporter for the Swedish Public Radio (Sveriges Radio). In November 2014, Alla took part in the Media Innovation Hackathon by Al Jazeera in Doha (Qatar) and in September 2016, she participated in a coding camp ‘Tjejer Kodar’ (in English: ‘Girls Code’) where she learned the basics in Arduino, electronics and C language. Currently, Alla also teaches master journalism students in the areas of investigative journalism, data journalism and visualization, data journalism research and open data.

Tarjei Leer-Salvesen

Tarjei Leer-Salvesen (40) is an investigative journalist working for the regional newspaper Fædrelandsvennen in Norway. He has specialised in research method, sharing his time between newspapers and documentary film projects the past years. His particular interest is archive research and tools to access public information, and at Fædrelandsvennen he has started the website Innsyn.no which provides a new tool for this.

Lorenzo Ferrari

After getting a PhD in political history in 2014, Lorenzo Ferrari has worked at the University of Turku. He is now based at OBC Transeuropa, an Italian think-tank and media outlet that co-founded the European Data Journalism Network in 2016. Since its inception, Lorenzo has been working on the development and running of the network, which aims at connecting data journalism with reporting on all things Europe. Lorenzo also writes for a few newspapers, including Il Post and VoxEurop.

Raul Ferrer Conill

Raul Ferrer Conill is a doctoral candidate in the department of Media and Communication Studies at Karlstad University, Sweden. He has published his work in Journalism Studies, Digital Journalism, and Television and New Media, among others. He has presented his work widely in international conferences like ICA, AoIR, ECREA, and the Future of Journalism. His current research interests cover digital journalism, gamification, native advertising, convergence, and processes of datafication. His dissertation examines the uses of gamification in digital news outlets.

Michele Joel

Michele Joel, Global Marketing Acquisitions Director with Highsoft AS, has been part of the marketing and information technology field for 18 years. She is in charge of global communications for the industry’s #1 top data visualization software, Highcharts, Highstock and Highmaps. She was written in Kotler’s Principles of Marketing textbook as a best case study for marketing work while at the University of South Florida and was an Adjunct Professor for Masters in Social Media Marketing at the University of Florida. Ms. Joel worked in research while in NYC and started her own social media agency in NYC in 2002. She holds an MBA, IAA International Marketing, and a Bachelors of Science in Advertising.

Marco Giannini

Marco Giannini is an information designer and visual journalist at La Repubblica, one of the most important Italian newspapers. He works on a daily basis, both for the print and the online edition, mainly focusing on breaking news, but also covering international affairs, Politics, Economics, Environment, Sport and Leisure, Arts and Culture. On a long parental leave, he recently moved to Copenhagen, Denmark, with his family. His interests move from strict infographic design to visual perception, data journalism, and visual fiction. He also writes regularly about Dataviz and visual thinking on a bunch of blogs.