Each Autumn the department and Polis invite media practitioners to discuss their work as part of our Media and Communications in Action series. The talks take place Weds 3-4pm – they are open to LSE students and will be held online. Zoom links can be accessed via the Moodle site for MC408.

Ben Hunte, Weds 30th September

Ben Hunte is a the BBC’s first LGBT Correspondent, appointed in April 2019 to report on stories surrounding sexuality and gender. Ben has worked on a variety of stories ranging from Poland’s ‘LGBT Free Zones’ to male victims of sexual abuse as well as garnering millions of views on his digital films on issues affecting the LGBT+ community.

Chair: Dr Dylan Mulvin

Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, Weds 7th October

Shola Mos-Shogbamimu a New York Attorney and Solicitor of England & Wales with broad expertise in the financial services industry, writer, public speaker and political commentator. A political & women’s rights activist, she founded the Women in Leadership publication as a platform to drive positive change on topical issues that impact women globally and established She@LawTalks to promote women & BAME leadership in the legal profession.

Chair: Prof Shakuntala Banaji

Ismail Einashe, Weds 14th October

 Ismail Einashe is an award-winning journalist and writer covering migration, human rights and international news. He has written for The Guardian, BBC News, The Sunday Times, Foreign Policy, The Nation and NPR, among many others. Previously, he worked for BBC Radio & Current Affairs and he has presented on BBC Radio. He co-edited the book Lost in Media: Migrant Perspectives and the Public Sphere, essays from which have been republished in Eurozine, the Guardian, Lit Hub and Guerilla Translation.

Chair: Prof Myria Georgiou

Yinka Ibukun, Weds 21st October

Yinka Ibukun is Bloomberg’s West Africa bureau chief, covering 20 countries from her base in Accra. Before moving to the Ghanaian capital and taking up this expanded role, she worked more than 10 years as a journalist in her adopted hometown of Lagos.

Chair: Dr Simidele Dosekun

Burhan Wazir, Weds 28th October

Burhan Wazir is an award-winning writer and editor, based in London. He works at Coda Story, where he is the managing editor of sections on authoritarian technology and disinformation. Previously, he has worked at The Times, where he was Deputy Features Editor from 2003-2007, and The Observer, where he covered domestic and international news and features. In 2003, he covered the war in Iraq and has reported from Israel, Palestine, India, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Burundi and other countries.

Chair: Dr Ram Bhat

*****READING WEEK*****

Reima Yosif, Weds 11th November

Dr. Reima Shakeir, is an international scholar and nonprofit executive focused on improving diversity/ inclusion and access for all with a focus on minorities from marginalized communities. Her extensive experience in research design, diversity/inclusion and execution informs the strategic roadmap and operating model for one of the world’s most recognizable global nonprofits, the Edmond de Rothschilds foundations, specifically where she serves at Chief Operating Officer for one of their flagship programs: The Ariane de Rothschild Fellowship. Reima also teaches organizational communication in the context of contemporary society at NYU’s Stern School of Business. Fluent in both Arabic and English, Reima’s experience spans many countries and cultures. Through both her formal academic research and practical “on the ground” execution, Reima is committed to more inclusive, high-quality education systems and programs at large. Reima earned her Masters in English Literature from Harvard University where she was awarded Dean’s Academic Achievement Award and Derek Bok Public Service Award. She has a BA in English and Comparative Literature from Ain Shams University in Cairo Egypt. As part of AdR Fellowship she completed Executive Education with Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK and Essec Business School in France and Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management (in Innovation and Design Thinking ), Cornell University, USA. Reima earned her Doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania with double distinction.

Chair: Prof Shani Orgad

Mark Frankel, Weds 18th November

Mark Frankel is a digital and social media specialist. Mark graduated from the LSE and went on to work in producing and editing with BBC News, working as a Social Media Editor before becoming Head of Social Media at Philip Morris International.  Most recently, Mark has published a report with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism to explore social media communities in the COVID-19 pandemic and how how journalists can interact with them.

Chair: TBC

Gemma Milne, Weds 25th November

Gemma Milne is a Science and Technology writer whose work focuses on biotech, space, health, advanced computing and the ways in which academic research is conducted. Gemma has recently published her first book, Smoke & Mirrors: How Hype Obscures the Future and How to See Past It, which looks into the role hype can play in science, tech and society – from how it is used, how it can mislead and how it can be combated. She will soon start a PhD in Science and Technology Studies at UCL studying the ethics and responsibility of corporate futurism.

Chair: Dr Jean-Christophe Plantin

Simple Politics, Weds 2nd December

Tatton Spiller / Diane Daniels work for Simple Politics, an educational organisation aimed at simplifying political processes for a general audience.

Tatton has been simplifying politics all his adult life. Much of that was during ten years of teaching English, Politics and Citizenship at Secondary level.

He had a brief step away from teaching from 2008 until 2011. In this time he worked briefly as a journalist, but most of it was designing and delivering educational workshops for KS2-5 at the Houses of Parliament.

He then returned to the classroom for a few years. In that time he grew increasingly frustrated that nothing like SP existed. So he created it. Simple Politics was launched in 2015.

Diane grew up in Northern Ireland, that’s where her interest in politics first started. She joined Simple Politics to work on the 2019 General Election and stayed.

She worked for many years in financial communications (Halifax and Lloyds Banking Group), which gives her lots of experience in making complex things much easier to understand.

Chair: Dr Nick Anstead

Katrina Ffrench, Weds 9th December

Katrina Ffrench is chief executive of the charity StopWatch, which campaigns for fair and effective policing. Since forming in 2010, StopWatch has led a wide-ranging campaign against the disproportionate use of stop and search, the increasing use of exceptional stop and search powers and the weakening of accountability mechanisms. This includes legal and policy analysis, media coverage and commentary, political advocacy, litigation, submissions to national and international organisations and community organising.

Chair: Dr Seeta Peña Gangadharan