Language: English

Thierry Cruvellier is the Editor-in-Chief of Justice Info, the leading news website on international justice created in 2015 by Fondation Hirondelle. 

For about thirty years, he has reported on trials for crimes against humanity and genocide, from Rwanda to Sierra Leone, from the former Yugoslavia to Cambodia and Colombia. He has been an Op-ed contributor to The New York Times, a 2003 recipient of the prestigious Nieman Foundation Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard University. 

He has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA), and is the author of three books: Court of Remorse (Le Tribunal des vaincus, Calmann-Lévy, 2006) on Rwanda’s genocide trials; The Master of Confessions (Le Maître des aveux, Gallimard, 2011) on the Khmer Rouge trials in Cambodia; and Promised Land (Terre promise, Gallimard, 2018), a tale on the extraordinary resilience of the Sierra Leonean people over the past forty years.

Shamil Idriss is CEO of Search for Common Ground (Search), an international non-profit organisation committed to transforming the way the world deals with conflict, away from adversarial approaches toward cooperative solutions. With 500+ staff working in 30 countries, Search is the largest dedicated peacebuilding organisation and was nominated by the Quakers for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.

During his tenure at Search for Common Ground, Idriss has presided over the organisation’s growth in reach, impact, and influence, including leading merger processes with Soliya and Preemptive Love Coalition and strategic partnerships with global public and private sector entities, including the Office of the UN Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs and Meta.

Prior to his current role, Idriss was the CEO of Soliya where he led a public-private sector coalition to establish the field of virtual exchanges. In 2005, he was appointed by then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as Deputy Director of the UN Alliance of Civilizations. He served on the Steering Committee of the World Economic Forum’s Council of 100 Leaders and is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders and recipient of the 2015 Open Society Foundation New Executive Award. He serves on the Boards of Giving Tuesday, Ploughshares Fund, and Soliya.

Claire Hajaj is a specialist in conflict and post-conflict dynamics, currently serving as the executive director of Inter Mediate. For more than 20 years, she has contributed to humanitarian, political and security strategies to mitigate conflicts in some of the world’s most complex settings.

Hajaj started her career working on conflict resolution and negotiations at the United Nations Security Council in 2002 with the UN Counter Terrorism Committee and later worked for the United Nations in Lebanon, Kosovo, Iraq, Myanmar, Nigeria and Pakistan. Her experience ranges from negotiating community-level access for vaccinators in extremist-dominated regions on the Afghan-Pakistan border to supporting the UN Special Representative in Iraq during the height of the post-war insurgency, to negotiating a landmark stabilisation agreement between the UN and Lebanon during the Syria conflict and refugee crisis.

Sharing Palestinian and Jewish heritage, Hajaj ’s writing on conflict has appeared in Newsweek, the Sunday Times, the New Statesman, the Economist, Granta, and as the author of two novels. Her policy writing has appeared in Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Global Journal of Health Governance and the UN Centre for Policy Research, where she is an Inaugural Fellow. She is also a trustee for the UK for UNHCR. 

Ronilso Pacheco is a Brazilian theologian. He graduated from PUC-Rio (Catholic Pontifical University of Rio de Janeiro) and holds an M.A. in Religion and Society from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Pacheco is the Program Director at ISER (Institute of Studies on Religion) and was a Professor of Ethics in the Philosophy Department at Manhattan University. Pacheco is a researcher interested in democracy, race, fundamentalism, and extremism.

He is the author of the books Teologia Negra (Black Theology) and Occupy, Resist, and Subvert. He is a frequent contributor to various media outlets in Brazil and a regular columnist for the UOL channel, where he comments on international politics and religion. Pacheco is an alumni of the Ford Foundation’s Ford Global Fellowship Program, joining its first class (2020), and a winner of the National Endowment for Democracy’s Regan-Fascell Fellowship Program (2024), with a research project on Religion, Democracy and Civic Space.

Saiph Savage is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Civic AI Lab at Northeastern University’s Khoury College of Computer Sciences. Her research develops intelligent civic technologies to combat misinformation, organize collective action, and empower gig and rural workers to access better jobs, combining AI with human-centered design. She has collaborated with governments and authored policy briefs through the Federation of American Scientists’ accelerator program.

Previously, Savage worked at Intel Labs, Microsoft Bing, and Stanford’s Crowd Research initiative, and has taught at West Virginia University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Washington. Her work has been published in top venues including ACM CHI, CSCW, AAAI ICWSM, and the Web Conference, and featured by the BBC, The Economist, and The New York Times.

A recipient of UN and NSF grants, the Google Anita Borg Scholarship, and MIT Technology Review’s “35 Innovators Under 35” honor, Savage also serves as a Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a technical advisor to Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a member of ACM SIGCHI’s Latin America Committee.

Nicole Stremlau is Professor of Law and Society in a Digital World and Head of the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. Until 2024 she was also Research Professor in the School of Communications at the University of Johannesburg.

Stremlau’s research bridges socio-legal studies, communications/digital technologies, and international development/African Studies. She is the author or editor of several books including Media, Conflict, and the State in Africa (CUP 2018) and Speech and Society in Turbulent Times (CUP 2017). She has co-authored UNESCO’s flagship publication, World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development (2018). Her peer reviewed articles have appeared in leading journals across these fields including African Affairs, the International Journal of Communications, and the International Journal of Human Rights. She has long-term field research experience in the Horn of Africa (particularly Ethiopia and Somaliland) and South Africa.

She is currently leading several large international research projects including the European Research Council (ERC) ConflictNet project on the Politics and Practice of Social Media in Conflict with a focus on Africa. She is also the Oxford lead of the Horizon Europe ReMeD (Resilient Media for Democracy in the Digital Age) project and she was recently awarded a European Media and Information Fund project to launch a new programme -InfoLead- Information and Media Literacy for Judges and Policymakers, in partnership with the University of Florence and the University of Helsinki. Stremlau also serves as a Co-Investigator at the ESRC funded Centre for Public Authority and International Development at the London School of Economics’ Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa.

While Stremlau has written extensively about media, governance (particularly beyond state authorities) and conflict, her recent work has focused on issues around information controls (including online hate speech/mis/disinformation, the inequalities of online content moderation, and internet shutdowns); the politics of AI policymaking in Africa, including the emerging fields of AI for social good and anticipatory action; and innovation, technology beyond the state, including, for example, the role of technology in transnational dispute resolution among migrant and marginalized diaspora communities in Africa. She currently directs the Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute and regularly contributes to international media and public debates. She holds degrees from Wesleyan University (BA with honours, College of Social Studies), the School of Oriental and African Studies (MA, International Politics) and the London School of Economics (PhD, Department of International Development).

Marianna Araujo is a journalist with a PhD in Communication and Culture from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and over 20 years of experience working on human rights issues in Brazil. She has built a solid career at the intersection of journalism, communication, and advocacy for fundamental rights, previously serving as Communications Director at The Intercept Brasil, a media outlet known for its investigative coverage.

Araujo currently serves as Director of Communication and Innovation at the Instituto Fogo Cruzado, a pioneering organisation in monitoring gun violence in Brazil. In this role, she develops communication strategies focused on urban violence and democracy. Her work involves creating narratives that humanise violence data, promoting public awareness about the impacts of gun violence on Brazilian communities.

Dion Bailey is Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at The News Movement: a digital media startup. He is also an Adjunct Professor at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

Previously, Dion was VP, Head of Technology at the Wall Street Journal. In that role he provided executive leadership and strategic direction across the WSJ, and led the tech transformation of other Dow Jones entities, including their product, editorial, commercial, and acquisition strategies.

In the past, Dion also served as Executive Technical Product Manager at BBC, where he delivered an award-winning technology solution supporting the 2012 Olympics. In addition, he held lead roles at the BBC Future Media & Technology Division and served as Chief Architecture at News UK.

Davita Frankel-Bonacci is a Senior Product Manager at Google working on Search growth and acceleration, focusing on genAI opportunities to enhance Search experiences.

Previously, she co-lead Product for Google News Ecosystems where she led a global team of product managers who built genAI products to help news publishers of all sizes to research, distribute, and monetize their content. Prior to Google, she worked at BlackRock building portfolio management software platforms, specializing in passive equity portfolio strategies.

Based in New York City, she holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Pamela Wadende is a senior lecturer at Kenya’s Kisii University where she trains future teachers in Developmental Psychology and supervises graduate students. Dr. Wadende’s cross-cultural work with children explores how they learn and flourish in rapidly changing societies in low- and middle-income countries, such as Kenya, Ethiopia, Cameroon and Zambia.

Throughout her career, her guiding question has been: What spurs human flourishing and how can it be optimised through interventions?  Dr. Wadende believes that developmental outcomes are heavily shaped by environmental factors on a local and global scale, such as political tensions or climate change.  A community’s cultural traditions not only foster a sense of belonging for its members but hold a wealth of tools for interventions aimed at supporting their well-being. 

In line with this approach, Dr. Wadende  recently investigated ways of bridging children’s transition from home to school in Kenya and Zambia, supported by Global Ties and UKRI, and currently explores character development among children in Kenya, Cameroon and Ethiopia in two projects funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation.