#MediaStrong
Speakers
About
Location

#MediaStrong

Craft with Care
A Mental Health Symposium for Journalists

City, University of London

May 17th 2024
10am-5pm

Allan Little

Allan Little is a Special Correspondent for BBC News. He has worked at the corporation for more than four decades, and devoted much of his career to reporting on news overseas. Allan witnessed the anti-communist revolutions that swept Eastern and Central Europe in 1989, and reported on the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the first Gulf War that soon followed. He also covered the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Saima Mohsin – Host

Saima Mohsin anchors Sky News Today and has reported from 28 countries as an International Correspondent. She began her career in radio in 1995 & has covered the capture & killing of Osama Bin Laden, the assassinations of Kim Jong Nam & Benazir Bhutto, the Taliban, missing plane MH370, protests, coups & the climate crisis. She has interviewed world leaders and celebrities for the BBC, CNN, ITV, PBS Newshour and Channel 4 She was among Newsweek’s Top 100 women to Shake Pakistan. Saima was injured on assignment in Jerusalem in 2014 and has spent time researching trauma & PTSD.

Jonathan Levy

Jonathan Levy is the Executive Editor and Managing Director of Sky News, responsible for all its journalism across digital, audio and TV platforms. He was previously Director of Newsgathering and Operations, overseeing UK and foreign coverage. Before that he was Sky’s Head of Politics, running its team of Westminster journalists. He began his career in journalism at NBC News, moving to Sky
in 2002.

Leona O’Neill

Leona O’Neill is the Founder of the #MediaStrong symposium. Prior to her current position of Head of Undergraduate Journalism at Ulster University she was a news reporter, covering life in Northern Ireland for over 25 years. Leona is also a Field Producer for international media outlets, including: Vice, Al Jazeera, ABC and CBC. She developed PTSD in 2019 after witnessing the brutal murder of a colleague at a riot. She co-edited a book called Breaking: Trauma in the Newsroom, which features the stories of how dozens of media professionals have been psychologically and emotionally affected during the course of their work. Leona is currently undertaking a PhD in
Journalism and Trauma.

Jeremy Bowen

Jeremy Bowen is a Welsh journalist and television presenter. He was the BBC’s Middle East correspondent, based in Jerusalem, between 1995 and 2000 and the BBC Middle East editor from 2005 to 2022, before being appointed the International Editor of BBC News in August 2022. While Middle East Editor he led the coverage of the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ and the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon for which BBC News won an Emmy. A seasoned war correspondent, Jeremy has reported from more than
70 countries.

Dr Lea Hellmueller

Dr Lea Hellmueller is Director of Research and Reader (Associate Professor) at the Journalism Department at City, University of London. She is also an Affiliated Researcher with the Violence and Society Centre. Before joining academia, she worked as a journalist in Switzerland, South Africa and the United States. Lea researches the role of the media and journalism in a globalising world, focusing on precarities of freelancers and global ethical decision-making in newsrooms, including questions around global risk journalism, social justice, and violence and media.

James Scurry

James Scurry is a Senior Producer and an Assistant Editor at Sky News. He was previously also a Deputy Foreign News Editor at Sky News and has also worked for Al Jazeera English and ITV News London. He began his career in television in 2001 at Channel 9 Australia. James is also a UKCP-accredited psychotherapist and Co-founder and Director of the mental health non-profit Safely Held Spaces, which provides editorial mental health training programmes to newsrooms. He has worked in the UK and internationally with veterans and soldiers experiencing post-traumatic stress and complex trauma. James is currently completing a teacher training qualification in mindfulness-based Tibetan movement practices for trauma at Berkeley in California.

Juliana Ruhfus

Juliana Ruhfus took over as Director of Dart Centre Europe (DCE) in 2022 after more than 10 years as a trustee on DCE’s European board of directors. She is an award-winning broadcaster and investigative journalist whose career spans more than 25 years as a reporter, filmmaker and executive producer in documentaries and current affairs. She has worked on Channel 4’s Unreported World, Al Jazeera English and BBC World Service Eye. Her work has always had a strong international focus including covering wars, conflicts and victims of human
rights abuses.

Charlie Morley

Charlie Morley is a bestselling author and teacher of lucid dreaming and mindfulness of dream and sleep.
He has written four books which have been translated into 15 languages and has run workshops and retreats in more than 30 countries. He has run courses and given talks for the Metropolitan Police, Reuters News Agency and the Army Air Corps as well as presenting his work with military veterans on Sky News and at the Ministry of Defence Mindfulness Symposium. In 2023, the first scientific study into Charlie’s methods was published in the peer-reviewed journal Traumatology in which 85% of participants experienced “a remarkable decrease in PTSD symptoms” while using lucid dreaming techniques to transform their nightmares.

Dr Zahera Harb

Dr Zahera Harb is a specialist in international journalism at City, University of London, where she is International Journalism Studies Cluster Lead (Director of MA International Journalism and MA Media and Globalisation).
Dr Harb is a former member of the UK media regulator Ofcom’s content board and the Ethical Journalism Network. She is currently a board member/trustee of the Dart Centre Europe for Journalism and Trauma and Marie Colvin Journalists’ Network.
Dr Harb worked for over a decade as a journalist in her native country Lebanon. She is also a contributor for Al Jazeera English

Matthew Green

Matthew Green spent 14 years as a correspondent for Reuters and the Financial Times. He wrote Aftershock: Fighting War, Surviving Trauma and Finding Peace, a book documenting the struggles of military veterans and their families recovering from the trauma of war. For the past five years, he has worked as a climate journalist, and is Global Investigations editor at DeSmog, a nonprofit news service.
He is a a co-host of the Collective Trauma Summit and a contributor to the Pocket Project nonprofit. His Resonant World newsletter serves a global movement exploring the impact of individual, ancestral and collective trauma – and how it can be healed.

Sophia Alexandra Hall

Sophia Alexandra Hall is Deputy Digital Editor at The Big Issue. She is also a mentor for the John Schofield Trust’s new programme for care experienced journalists. Recently she returned from a research trip to America as part of a Churchill Fellowship. Her fellowship research has led to the creation of a new trauma-informed toolkit for journalists working with vulnerable communities. Sophia is a former winner of the Excellence in Journalism Awards, the PPA Next Gen Awards, and the Diana Award. A proud care experienced person, Sophia is passionate about making newsrooms more trauma-informed.

Dr Heather Sequeira

Dr Heather Sequeira is a consultant psychologist who has spent the past two decades studying trauma, PTSD, and aversive life experiences. She also has personal experience with OCD and is interested in the intersection between trauma and a range of mental health experiences such as OCD, anxiety and depression. As a psychologist, Heather is passionate about making complex topics accessible and relevant to people’s lives. She developed the PTSD Masterclass, an innovative British Psychological Society-approved training for clinicians and therapists in PTSD.

Dr Pauline Renaud

Dr Pauline Renaud is a Visiting Lecturer at City, University of London where she teaches in the International Journalism MA programme. She also currently works as a Research Assistant on a project developed in partnership with Dart Center Europe, Rory Peck Trust and Safely Held Spaces to create an ethical decision-making toolkit for journalists covering crises and conflicts. Pauline has over 15 years’ experience as a reporter and editor. She has worked as a broadcast journalist in France and as a financial reporter and editor at PA Media and Thomson Reuters. She has also contributed to several media organisations in Switzerland, French Guiana
and Mauritius.

Dr Brock Chisholm

Dr Brock Chisholm is a consultant clinical psychologist with 20 years experience of working with people who have experienced stress and trauma. He is a founder of Trauma Treatment International, which supports people and organisations affected by trauma, particularly collective violence; a trustee of Survivors UK, a charity providing psychological therapy to rape survivors; and the clinical lead and trustee of the UK Psychological Trauma Society, a leading UK authority in the psychological consequences following traumatic events. Dr Chisholm has also worked extensively with journalists and media organisations including Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, Full Fact, Media Defence, Bellingcat, Vice News, The Guardian, The New York Times and others.

Sarah Ward-Lilley MBE

Sarah Ward-Lilley MBE is a journalist and former Managing Editor of BBC News, now working as an executive coach, mediator and leadership consultant. She is also Chair of Trustees of Rukhshana Media, an all-female news agency operating inside Afghanistan, focused on Afghan women and their stories. Whilst at the BBC, Sarah led the development of greater trauma awareness in the corportation and supported colleagues through a number of bereavements, attacks, kidnappings and other crises.
She received an MBE in 2020 for her work in journalism and
mental health.

Shayma Bakht

Shayma Bakht is a fellow of the John Schofield Trust. She is a multi award-winning journalist at The Times who has reported from across Asia and the Middle East. She has worked on high-risk dispatches – including an undercover expose from Saudi Arabia and reporting from the West Bank, Syria and Yemen during wartime. Her investigation into the Homes for Ukraine scheme triggered the UNHCR to issue a stark warning to the UK government and won her Young Journalist of the Year at the 2023 Press Awards.

Lindsay McCoy

Lindsay McCoy is the Executive Editor of BBC Verify which was launched in May 2023. BBC Verify brings together forensic journalists and expert talent from across the BBC into one team. The team have a range of Open source intelligence capabilities at their fingertips to verify video, fact-check stories, counter disinformation, and analyse data.

Lindsay was Deputy Editor of the One, Six and Ten o’clock news before joining BBC Verify and worked on the TV bulletins through many general elections and the pandemic.

David Stenhouse

David Stenhouse is the Chief Executive of the John Schofield Trust, the charity which runs the biggest diversity and social mobility programme in UK and Irish Journalism. This year the Trust is mentoring more than 200 print, digital, multimedia and broadcast journalists across the UK and Ireland and pairing them with mentors who support their personal and professional development.

Before he joined the Trust he worked as a journalist for many years. He founded the BBC Generations youth engagement and democracy project, is an award-winning documentary maker for BBC Radio 4 and worked in the US and UK for the BBC and as a podcast Executive Editor.

Chris Booth

Chris Booth worked in foreign broadcast news for two decades, largely with Associated Press and later for the BBC, where he was bureau chief in Moscow and later in Baghdad. He covered the wars in Chechnya, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq as well as revolution and civil conflict in Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia and elsewhere. Chris also reported on natural disasters and multiple acts of terror, including the 2004 school siege in Beslan in southern Russia in which more than 330 people were killed, including 186 children.