MFRR Summit 2026

Moderator

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  Nathanael Liminski

  Head of the State Chancellery of North Rhine-Westphalia, Minister for Federal, European and International Affairs and the Media

  Nathanael Liminski, born in Bonn on September 19, 1985, has been Minister for Federal, European, International Affairs and Media of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia since June 29, 2022, and Head of the State Chancellery of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia since June 2017. He has been a member of the State Parliament since November 2025. From 2014 to 2017, Liminski was parliamentary director of the CDU parliamentary group in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia. Previously, he worked as a speech writer and policy officer at the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Ministry of Defense. From 2010 to 2011, he worked in the Hessian State Chancellery as a speech writer for the Prime Minister of Hesse. Nathanael Liminski studied Medieval and Modern History, Political Science and Public Law at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn. He is married and has four children.

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  Elena Rodina

  MFRR Coordinator at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)

  Elena Rodina is a press freedom expert specialising in journalists’ safety, creative resistance, and exiled media. She coordinates the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) consortium at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), where she helps drive efforts to monitor violations, support journalists on the ground, and advocate for press freedom across Europe. Elena has worked with international organisations including the Committee to Protect Journalists and Civil Rights Defenders, combining hands-on support and advocacy with scholarly insight. She is a published academic scholar and holds a PhD in Media and Communication from Northwestern University (USA) and is based in Germany.

Speakers

Speakers

Moderator

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  Renate Schroeder

  Director of the European Federation of Journalists

  Renate Schroeder is the Director of the European Federation of Journalists, In 1993 she joined the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and since 2003 she works for the EFJ. Advocacy at EU and Council of Europe level; presentation of EFJ at international meetings, lectures and fact-finding media freedom missions; member of juries of journalistic prizes, project work, communication and assistance in several EFJ expert groups including on freelancers,   media literacy and digital journalism, cover her work-load in the small dynamic Brussels office. Additionally, she has been leading the Federation’s debate on the European Media Freedom Act.

  Renate studied International Relations and Political Science at Boston University (Bachelor’s Degree in 1988) and in Berlin at the Free University (Masters in 1992). She worked at the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation in Brussels before she joined the EFJ.  She is of German nationality and speaks English, French, Italian, German and Spanish (passive).

Speakers

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  Bojana Kostić

  Senior Digital Policy Advisor, GFMD

  Bojana Kostić is a Senior Digital Policy Advisor at the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD). With nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of public-interest journalism, media freedom, technology, and law, she supports the GFMD community through advocacy, policy development, and engagement in regional and international policy processes on digital governance, media freedom, and AI. Bojana has collaborated on a range of international policy initiatives organised by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe, and UNESCO, as well as contributed to the EU’s digital and technology sovereignty agenda. She serves as a legal advisor to the GFMD and OCCRP-led Journalism Cloud Alliance (JCA), where her work focuses on data governance and liability, AI governance, public-interest digital infrastructure, and policy solutions that strengthen the visibility, sustainability, and resilience of independent media and public-interest journalism.

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  Dr. Laura Moore

  Head of Research and Evaluation, Deutsche Welle

  Laura Moore heads the Advocacy, Research and Public Affairs Department at DW Akademie, Germany’s leading organisation for international media development. With 15 years of experience in the field, Laura’s work focuses on media viability and the financing of journalism. She’s the co-author of the Media Viability Manifesto, the first ever sector-wide framework to tackle the economic crisis facing journalism. In her book “Measuring Global Media Freedom” she reflects on how best to assess media systems around the world. Laura has worked as a journalist for several German media outlets and was a newspaper reporter in Mexico.

Moderator

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  Jamie Wiseman

  Senior Europe Advocacy Officer, International Press Institute (IPI)

  Jamie Wiseman is a media freedom advocate at the International Press Institute (IPI), a global media freedom organisation based in Vienna. As Senior Europe Advocacy Officer, he heads IPI’s Europe advocacy team and coordinates the organisation’s EU policy work in Brussels. He is specialised on topics such as media capture, impunity for attacks on the press, and spyware attacks on journalists. A former newspaper journalist in the UK, where he grew up, he now helps IPI’s global network of journalists defending media freedom and independent journalism wherever they are threatened.

Speakers

• Karolína Kašparová

  Strategic Development Manager, Czech Radio

• Eva Simon

  Senior Advocacy Officer, the Head of Tech & Rights at the Civil Liberties Union for Europe

  Eva Simon is a lawyer specialising in constitutional rights, digital rights, and media freedom. Her work focuses on the intersection of human rights and technology, particularly the impact of digital regulation freedom of expression, and media pluralism. Eva is a senior advocacy officer and the Head of Tech &  Rights at the Civil Liberties Union for Europe. She is also a member of the European Commission’s AI Advisory Forum.

Moderator

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  Dimitri Bettoni

  Researcher and journalist at the Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT)

  Dimitri Bettoni is a researcher and journalist at the Italian think tank Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT). He holds a PhD in journalism, security and surveillance from the Institute for Future Media, Democracy and Society (FuJo) at Dublin City University, Ireland. He is currently working on the intersection of journalism and the digital world, with a focus on security and human rights. As a journalist, he has worked for international media, focusing on Turkey and neighboring countries. He is also a founding honorary member of the Foreign Media Association, a representative and advocacy organization created by and for international media professionals based in Turkey, and a member of Info.nodes, an Italian nonprofit organization that advocates for an open and just society through research, campaigning and public interest journalism.

Speakers

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  Dr. Ľuboš Kukliš

  Expert on media regulation and internet governance, Member of the Digital Services Act Enforcement Team at the European Commission (DG Connect)

  Expert on media regulation and internet governance.

  Member of the Digital Services Act Enforcement Team at the European Commission (DG Connect).

  In his previous roles he served as the Director of the Slovak Media Authority, Chair of the European Platform of Regulatory Authorities (EPRA) and Chair of the European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA).

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  Svea Windwehr

  Policy Manager, Mozilla

  Svea Windwehr is a policy manager at Mozilla, where she works on issues related to encryption, user rights and protecting the openness of the web. Before joining Mozilla, she worked at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Society for Civil Rights, Google and the European Commission. She studied political science and law in Maastricht, Berkeley, and Oxford.

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  Giacomo Zandonini

  Investigative Journalist, Co-Founder, Fada Collective

  Giacomo Zandonini is a Rome-based investigative reporter who produces long-form stories that combine field research with document and open-data analysis. His work has appeared in De Correspondent, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Le Monde, De Groene Amsterdammer, Mediapart, Al Jazeera, Politico, Internazionale, and The New Humanitarian. He co-founded the Italian nonprofit newsroom Fada Collective. He received a special mention at the European Press Prize (2024) and is a Bertha Foundation 2026 fellow.

Moderator

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  Sielke Kelner

  Researcher and advocacy officer at Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT)

  Sielke Kelner is a researcher and advocacy officer at Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa, where she works within the Media Freedom Rapid Response, a Europe-wide consortium addressing violations of media freedom. In parallel, she coordinates Media Advocacy Action for Moldova, a collaborative platform linking Italy, Moldova, and Romania to support Moldova’s alignment with European standards on freedom of information and media pluralism. Sielke also serves as coordinator and spokesperson for CASE Italia, a network of 17 Italian civil society organisations that support public watchdogs targeted by legal harassment (SLAPPs), as part of the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe. Before moving into the non-profit sector, she earned a PhD in History from the Geneva Graduate Institute and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Leiden University.

Speakers

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  Stefano Vergine

  Investigative Journalist

  Stefano Vergine is an Italian investigative journalist. Having been a reporter and deputy editor at L’Espresso and an Australia correspondent for RSI, he is now a freelancer who contributes to several Italian and international media outlets among which the Italian daily Domani. He’s been part of the EIC network and ICIJ, and he was part of the team that carried out the Panama Papers (Pulitzer Prize, 2017), Football Leaks and Malta Files investigations, amongst others. He is the co-author of The Black Book of the Lega, which first revealed negotiations to fund the Italian political party Lega with Russian money.

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  Felicia Crețu

  Editorial fact-checker, CU SENS Media Project

  Felicia Crețu is a Moldovan investigative journalist, currently serving as editorial fact-checker at CU SENS, an independent video investigations outlet in Moldova.

  Her investigative reporting focused on government accountability: public funds lost to failed infrastructure projects, campaign finance, and official misconduct. A story on illegal seizure of city-owned property triggered the organization’s largest SLAPP suit: four parallel claims totaling €50,000 in damages. The case was ultimately dismissed.

  Her reporting was recognised both locally and internationally. In 2022, she located and exposed the hideout of Ilan Shor, a sanctioned Kremlin proxy and one of Moldova’s most-wanted fugitives, at a luxury villa in Israel. The story placed second in Investigative Journalism category at Romania’s leading journalism award. Named twice „Journalist of the Year” in 2020 and 2022 by Moldova’s Independent Journalism Center and Committee for Press Freedom.

Moderator

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  Teona Sekhniashvili

  Europe Advocacy Officer, International Press Institute (IPI)

  Teona Sekhniashvili is the Europe Advocacy Officer at the International Press Institute (IPI), where she monitors and documents attacks on media freedom, supports advocacy efforts in Europe, and coordinates the activities of IPI’s Central and Eastern Europe Independent Media Network. Before joining IPI in 2022, Teona worked as an editor at The Fix Media and held various positions at the Media Institute in Tbilisi and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung South Caucasus Office. She holds a master’s degree in political science from Central European University in Vienna.

Speakers

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  Maksym Popovych

  Senior Legal Officer for Europe and Central Asia, Article 19

  Maksym Popovych is a Senior Legal Officer for Europe at ARTICLE 19, a leading free speech NGO. Maksym leads the law and policy work on the situation with freedoms of expression and information in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. He focuses on human rights-based responses to information threats, such as disinformation and propaganda for war, as well as hate speech, defamation issues, media regulation, and freedom of expression in the situation of armed conflict. Maksym’s work involves intervening in free speech cases in national, constitutional, and regional human rights courts; developing policy standards and recommendations for states, business, and other actors; advising on national regulatory frameworks and legislative proposals; delivering training on free speech issues to national authorities, including criminal investigators and prosecutors; and providing legal advisory on submissions to the UN human rights mechanisms.

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  Sebnem Arsu

  Turkey Correspondent, Der Spiegel

  Sebnem Arsu is the Turkey correspondent for Der Spiegel and has been reporting on Turkey and the wider region for more than two decades.

  She began her career with Associated Press Television News, where she established the agency’s Istanbul bureau, before joining Reuters Television as a senior producer. In 2001, she joined The New York Times, becoming the newspaper’s first Turkish reporter and covering Turkey and the wider region for 15 years.

  Over the course of her career, Arsu has reported on major breaking news events, conflicts, elections, and significant political, social, and cultural developments across Turkey and its neighbourhood. Her work focuses on politics, democracy, freedom of expression, gender equality, and the role of religion in public life.

  Alongside her reporting, Arsu serves on the Preparatory Committee of the European Press Prize and is the Turkey board member of the International Press Institute (IPI), where she actively supports initiatives promoting press freedom and freedom of expression.

• Kety Abashidze

  Senior Human Rights Officer at Human Rights House Foundation

Speakers

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  Emilia Serkan

  Investigative journalist, Senior lecturer Journalism Department University of Bucharest

  Emilia Șercan is an investigative journalist, author, and lecturer at the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Studies, University of Bucharest.

  For more than a decade, she has been contributing to the independent news outlet PressOne, where she publishes investigative reporting on higher education. To date, she has exposed dozens of plagiarism cases involving the doctoral dissertations of top politicians and other public figures. Her investigations have prompted significant reforms to doctoral studies in Romania.

  She has also addressed the issue of academic misconduct in two books published by Humanitas Publishing House: The Doctorate Factory: How the Foundations of a Nation Are Undermined (2017) and The Ponta Case: Reconstructing the Most Infamous Plagiarism Scandal in Romania’s History (2022). Earlier, in 2015, she published her doctoral dissertation – defended at the University of Bucharest in 2013 – under the title The Cult of Secrecy: Mechanisms of Censorship in the Communist Press, published by Polirom Publishing House.

  She has been awarded several professional and academic fellowships and has received numerous awards and nominations from prestigious national and international organizations.

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  Oleksandra Horchynska

  Women in media, Project coordinator

  Oleksandra Horchynska, Journalist and Project Coordinator at Women in Media (Ukraine), coordinates projects that are aimed at the female journalists in Ukraine, such as psychological support, media check-in’s, self-support groups, documenting online attacks and others.  As a journalist she writes, among other topics, about gender equality, human rights, domestic violence, sexual violence as war crime, inclusion, discrimination, and LGBT+.

Moderator

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  Roberta Taveri

  Senior Media Freedom Programme Officer for Europe, ARTICLE 19 Europe

  Roberta joined ARTICLE 19 in September 2018 and currently works as Senior Media Freedom Programme Officer for Europe, focusing on South-Eastern Europe and leading on the Media Freedom Rapid Response.

  Roberta has worked for over 15 years in the human rights field at international level: she worked with international organisations and civil society in East Africa and Geneva. Before joining ARTICLE 19, Roberta worked in the international department of the Law Society of England and Wales in London. Roberta holds a Master degree in International Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London and degrees in Philosophy from the University of Bologna (Italy) and the University of Edinburgh.

Speakers

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  Vesna Rajoevic

  Investigative journalist, editor of KRIK's fact-checking portal "Raskrikavanje"

  Vesna Radojević is an investigative journalist and editor of KRIK’s fact-checking portal “Raskrikavanje.” She began her journalism career in 2011 at “PG Mreža.” In 2013, she joined “Istinomer,” another fact-checking portal, where she worked until October 2017. She is one of the recipients of the investigative journalism award presented by the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS) and the US Embassy in Belgrade.

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  Hanna Liubakova

  Journalist, political analyst, non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council

  Hanna Liubakova is a Belarusian journalist, political analyst, and non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. She has reported extensively on Belarus, democratic movements, authoritarianism and regional security, with her analysis and commentary appearing in international publications including The Washington Post, The Economist, and other outlets.

  Liubakova began her journalism career at Belsat TV, an independent Belarusian television channel banned by the regime. She subsequently worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague and is currently writing a book about Belarus. She is a recipient of the Amnesty International Chair, the Freedom of the Media Award from the Transatlantic Leadership Network, and the One Young World Journalist of the Year Award, and was a finalist for the European Press Prize. Her reporting and advocacy have made her a target of the Belarusian authorities: she was sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison by the Lukashenka regime and placed on wanted lists in Belarus, Russia, and other CIS countries. She continues to report from exile.

   

   

Speakers