Ujjwal Acharya

Ujjwal Acharya is a founding member of the Center for Media Research Nepal (CMR Nepal) and the Managing Director of the CMR Journalism Academy in Kathmandu, a joint project of Interlink Academy and CMR Nepal. Ujjwal previously worked for the BBC Word Service and was the the South Asia Regional Coordinator for the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). He worked at major national dailies including Nepal Samacharpatra, The Kathmandu Post, Republica and Annapurna Post. He has also worked in the area of media development and rights with UNESCO Kathmandu.

Erik Albrecht

Erik Albrecht is a freelance journalist for radio, web, and TV. He reports for German public radio. As a researcher, Erik specializes in new forms of journalism and the effects of digitization on media ecologies. As a trainer of trainers, he has been part in setting up various programmes for journalism and media management in Ukraine and Belarus. Previously, Erik worked as a foreign correspondent in Moscow reporting for German media outlets. He earned a master's degree in Journalism at TU Dortmund University with a thesis exploring journalistic culture and press freedom in Russia. He is currently based in Berlin and Sheffield.

Anas Aremeyaw Anas

Anas Aremeyaw Anas works as an investigative journalist at the Ghanaian newspaper The New Crusading Guide and for Al-Jazeera. His pieces have uncovered several scandals and won him a number of prizes, among them the Nafali Prize for Journalism. Born in 1978 in Accra, he attended the Ghana Institute of Journalism and later, law school. The main topics of his work are human rights violations in the West African region. Anas prefers not to be photographed, mainly because he often conducts his investigations by posing as a civilian and collecting the information secretly. It is his belief that a journalist’s job includes providing evidence for misbehavior and criminal conduct in order to strengthen civil society.

Nadiia Babynska

Nadiia Babynska is a Ukrainian journalist, media trainer and expert for open data and freedom of information projects. Nadia participates also in anti-corruption initiatives and youth projects. She has in-depth experience as an investigative reporter. Nadiia has been part of Interlink’s Ukrainian Summer Schools for Young Bloggers and Citizen Journalists as a Chief Trainer ever since they were started in 2016. Nadiia lives in Chernivtsi but traveling is part of most of her projects; and hence you might meet her anytime anywhere in Ukraine or abroad.

Denys Bihus

Deniz Bigus is a Ukrainian journalist who works as an author and anchorman for the weekly investigative TV show “Nashi Groshi - Our Money”. He specializes in investigating public procurements, state corruption, connections between government and business, and illegal assets of former officials. He is also the initiator of several crowd-sourcing projects such as GarnaHata (research on the ownership of real estate) and Declarations (digitization and analysis of assets declaration).

Alexandra Dracheva

Alexandra is one of our Junior Project Managers. She is at the end of her Bachelor degree in Media and Communication studies and is passionate about the organisation of events and projects, different types of media and environmentalism. She likes learning about new cultures and meeting international people.

Werner Eggert

Werner is the Founding Director of Interlink Academy in Hamburg, and he also works as a media consultant and journalism trainer for various institutions in Germany and abroad. Werner has been active in international media development for more than twenty years. He was at the helm of Bertelsmann's innovative Intajour blended learning project. Earlier, Werner was the Editor-in Chief of the Educational Television and Radio Channel TIDE in Hamburg, and worked as a Senior Project Manager at the International Institute for Journalism (now part of GIZ) in Berlin. Eggert worked for several years as a trainer and coach for the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation in Windhoek and as a media consultant in Yangon/Myanmar. Werner began his career as a journalist working for several print and broadcasting media. In the 1990s, he headed the first online desk for economic news in Germany.

Christina Elmer

Christina Elmer works for Spiegel Online and is a member of the editorial board. Christina is specialized in data and science journalism. Before joining Spiegel Online in May 2013, she worked at Stern magazine, where she examined hacked Nazi files and Wikileaks-data. Until 2011, Elmer worked as a research trainer and editor for the German press agency dpa. She was part of the team that set up Germany’s first department for data journalism and computer-as¬sisted reporting, also at dpa. Elmer’s special interest is science. In 2007, she won an award for a feature on ecological problems that was published in a national newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

Dan Gillmor

Dan Gillmor, an internationally recognized author and leader in new media and citizen-based journalism, is professor of practice in media literacy at the Arizona State University. Gillmor joined the San Jose Mercury News in 1994, writing a widely read column and blog that chronicled the dot-com revolution in Silicon Valley, and technology’s wider impact on policy and society. His blog is believed to have been the first by a journalist for a mainstream journalism organization. He is the author of “We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People,” and “Mediactive”, books on citizen journalism that are widely recognized as the first to explain how the collision of journalism and technology has democratized the creation of and access to media, and why it matters. He has been an early-stage investor in several new media startups including Silicon Valley-based Wikia Inc., founded by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and Seesmic, an online video company. He also co-founded and continues to advise the Knight-funded Citizen Media Law Project.

Claus Hesseling

Claus Hesseling is Director of Journalism Programs and Prinicpal Trainer at Interlink Academy. He started working as an online journalist in 2001, and since 2008 has been a reporter and producer for Germany’s public TV and broadcasting network ARD. As a data journalist, he creates “data-driven” TV documentaries. For more than 10 years now, he has worked as a media coach with clients from all over the globe.

Bikash Karki

Bikash Karki, an photojournalist, is the Training Director of the CMR Journalism Academy in Kathmandu, a joint project of Interlink Academy and CMR-Nepal. He is also the executive committee member of the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ). Previously, Bikash was the photo editor at the Annapurna Post, a national daily newspaper and also led the Photojounalists’ Club, the umbrella union of the photojournalists in Nepal. Bikash is a founding member of CMR-Nepal and has established himself as a photo, multimedia and mobile journalism trainer.

Mykola Kostynyan

Mykola Kostynyan is a trainer and consultant based in Kiev, Ukraine. He helps journalists and human rights defenders with digital security issues. In his workshops, he gives advice to small and medium-sized organizations on how to identify potential digital threats and how to protect their computers and data from hacking. Most of his activities take place in Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries and he regularly travels to Georgia and the Baltic. Mykola holds a university degree in economics.

Dominik Krebs

Dominik Krebs is a Hamburg-based graphic designer and video producer with his own company, Howwework. In his work as an online developer, his focus is on user interface design and Wordpress as a toolkit for online media development. He regularly supports the Interlink Academy in matters of brand development and online communications. Dominik studied communication studies in Vienna and graphic design (communication design) in Hamburg.

Lukas Eggert

Lukas works as a Project Manager and Administration Officer at the Interlink Academy. He looks after the projects with our partners, keeps our online publications up to date and our archive in order, and he supports trainers and lecturers whenever needed whenever needed. Lukas holds an M.A. in European and Asian Affairs and an LL.M. in International Relations. Lukas is now based in Hamburg but lived in China for several years. He speaks Chinese fluently. Lukas likes traveling, and his preferred destination is China, of course.

Tatiana Mostipan

Tatiana Mostipan holds a master´s degree in journalism and works as a correspondent for a local TV channel in Sumy/Ukraine. For several years, she organized summer camps for young Ukrainian journalists. After participating in Interlink’s UkrainianTrain-the-Trainer project in 2018, she became one of the trainers in Interlink’s “Summer School for Young Journalists” and “Media Literacy in Ukraine”.

Clayton Moyo

Clayton teaches broadcast media at the National University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe. He previously worked for Radio Dialogue, an independent radio station that pioneered alternative broadcasting in Zimbabwe. He is also a consultant working with independent local media organisations in mobile journalism training. Clayton researches on digital media cultures and social minorities' narratives in alternative platforms and has presented academic papers at conferences on the subject. He is currently fascinated by open source intelligence and he hopes to work with young journalists who are enthusiastic about it as well.

Joseph Mwenda

Joseph is a Zambian investigative journalist with more than 15 years of media experience. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief and Managing Director of News Diggers, an independent daily newspaper in Zambia. Joseph is an alumnus of the International Academy where he studied multimedia journalism in 2012/13. Joseph made his real journalism impact as a photo journalist at The Post Newspaper in Zambia before ascertaining his position as the newspaper's investigative asset on the political desk. After the closure of The Post, Joseph set up News Diggers which is the most relevant private newspaper in Zambia now.

Zenzele Ndebele

Zenzele Ndebele is the founder and Executive Director of CITE, the Center for Innovation and Technology in Zimbabwe, a fast-growing media start-up with its offices in Bulawayo. CITE and Interlink Academy jointly run a huge project to foster media and news literacy in rural areas. Zenzele is a journalist, media consultant and coach, he has worked for Radio Dialogue, a community radio initiative, he is also a part-time lecturer at the National University of Science and Technology. Zenzele holds a Masters Degree in Journalism and Media Studies.

Manfred Redelfs

Manfred Redelfs, born 1961 in Germany, is the Head of the Research & Investigations Unit at Greenpeace Germany. A journalist by training, he worked for the news program at Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Hamburg before concentrating on investigations. He studied political science and journalism in Hamburg, Washington, Berkeley and Oxford. His PhD thesis is about Investigative Reporting in the United States. Besides his job with Greenpeace in Hamburg, Manfred works as research coach for several publishing houses and vocational training programs for journalists.

Giannina Segnini

Giannina Segnini is a Costa Rican journalist and currently the James Madison visiting Professor of Journalism at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York City. Giannina is also the founder and coordinator of the investigative unit of the Costa Rican daily La Nación, where she worked from 1994 to 2014. Born in 1970, Giannina majored in Mass Communications at the University of Costa Rica, and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2001-2002. Using her method of data journalism, her investigative unit uncovered corruption scandals, which led to the opening of the criminal proceedings against and arrest of two former Presidents of Costa Rica. Her accomplishments in investigative journalism have won her honors such as the Ortega y Gasset Prize, the Best Journalistic Investigation (TILAC), and a special citation in the Maria Moors Cabot awards. She is a jury member of the Data Journalism Awards organized by the Global Editors Network and Google.

Katerina Sirinyok-Dolgaryova

Katerina Sirinyok-Dolgaryova is a media literacy trainer and a journalism instructor at Zaporizhzhia National University, Ukraine. She holds PhD in Social Communications from Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. Her thesis was devoted to exploring global online news and westernization of Ukrainian media. Katerina has intensive international experience as a Fulbright scholar in USA and fellow of various media programs in Germany, Poland and Sweden. In 2019, Katerina joined Interlink as a trainer for trainers in the Project Media Literacy in Ukraine’s Regions.

Bhekizulu Tshuma

Bhekizulu Tshuma is a media and information literacy trainer. His interests lie on fact-checking, digital security and content creation. He is also a lecturer at the National University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe. He has vast experience in media operations having worked for media organisations such as the Chronicle and Sunday News. He is also well vested in mobile journalism, especially the use of microblogging sites, such as Twitter and Facebook to tell community stories. Bhekizulu also collaborates with the Centre for Innovation and Technology (CITE) in Zimbabwe to convene multimedia trainings. He is currently pursueing a PhD in journalism at the University of Free State in South Africa.

Simon Eggert

Simon Eggert is one of our seminar assistants and he regularly helps out with the general administration at the Interlink Academy. Simon’s main occupation, however, is studying. His subject is Industrial Engineering. Simon devotes much of his leisure time to sports, especially Thai boxing and Soccer. Another favourite of his is traveling. His preferred destinations are Canada and Southeast Asia, but curiosity takes him to other places too. Simon was born in Namibia in Southern Africa, but he has spent most of his childhood and youth in Hamburg.

Henk Van Ess

Dutch-born Henk van Ess is specialised in new media, social media and data journalism. Henk is obsessed with finding news and stories in data. He is deeply involved in the worldwide training of information specialists, multimedia & web editors. His latest books are "Verification Handbook for Investigative Reporters", "The best ideas of 2013", "Handboek Datajournalism" and "The Google Code". Henk has been giving webinars in Interlink's e-learning modules for several years.