Team
Marius Dragomir
Director
Marius is the Director of the Center for Media, Data and Society. He previously worked for the Open Society Foundations (OSF) for over a decade: he has managed the research and policy portfolio of the Program on Independent Journalism (PIJ), formerly the Network Media Program (NMP), in London. He has also been one of the main editors for PIJ’s flagship research and advocacy project, Mapping Digital Media, which became the largest policy research project ever. He was the main writer and editor of OSF’s Television Across Europe, a comparative study of broadcast policies in 20 European countries. He has been advising international organizations including Council of Europe where he serves as a member of the Committee of Experts on Media Environment and Reform, and UNESCO, where he has been sitting on the advisory board of the organization’s World Trends in Media Freedom Project.
Cameran Ashraf
Core Faculty Member at the School of Public Policy
Cameran is an assistant professor at the School of Public Policy, human rights defender, and co-founder of international human rights and technology organization AccessNow. In recognition of his work, the European Parliament selected AccessNow as a finalist for the 2010 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, the European Union's highest human rights honor.
Eva Bognar
Senior Program Officer and Researcher
Éva is Senior Program Officer and Researcher at CMDS. Éva has been with the Center since 2006. She has been managing projects (including EU-funded projects on Violent Online Political Extremism, Media Pluralism, Press and Media Freedom, and projects funded by the Open Society Foundations on Hungarian Media Laws in Europe, misinformation, and Hungarian Media Ownership) and events (public lectures, workshops, conferences and the annual summer school) for the Center. Éva is the Hungarian contributor to the Digital News Report, a major comparative project from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University. Recently she has been studying Hungarian minorities and their use of online space; and media representation of migration. Her background is in sociology.
Sheila S. Coronel
Curriculum Development Lead
Sheila is an investigative journalist and journalism professor. She is co-founder of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) and in 2006, joined the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism as the inaugural director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism. In 2014, she was named the Journalism School’s academic dean, a position she held till the end of 2020. As academic dean and director of the Stabile Center, she has helped build and advance Columbia’s Journalism School investigative and data journalism curriculum, including the creation of a master’s degree in data journalism. She has also taught journalism courses and spoken at conferences around the world. In 2011 and 2012, she was the lead instructor of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network's Summer School. She is also the author of DIgging Deeper: A Guide for Investigative Journalists in the Balkans, and board chair of the Media Development Investment Fund, which invests in independent media in countries with a history of media repression. She also sits on the boards of the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Columbia Journalism Review, the National Security Archive, and ProPublica. In addition, she is a member and former board chair of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Roni Dorot
Researcher
Roni is a researcher for CMDS within the project Media Influence Matrix. She received her PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute, Florence, and holds a MA in Public Policy from Tel-Aviv University. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center of Conflict, Negotiation and Recovery, at the School of Public Policy, CEU. Her previous research analyzed the governmental outcomes of Israeli municipalities from a comparative perspective. She is a recipient of the Sapir Price for municipal studies (in Israel), the Istituto Italiano di Cultura scholarship and the EUI excellence fellowship. She is the author of ‘Documania’ blog at Haaretz newspaper.
Dumitrita Holdis
Project Officer
Dumitrița Holdiș works for the Center for Media, Data and Society's (CMDS) as a Project Officer for the Journalism Breakthroughs and Media Influence Matrix projects. Previously she has been working for the Center for Independent Journalism in Bucharest, Romania where she managed projects on media freedoms, journalism and hate speech. She conducted research in funding, disinformation and media representation in the past. She is also a podcast enthusiast. She created podcasts for the Central European University, the New Books Network and Radio Civic Sfântu Gheorghe, a community radio based in the Danube Delta in Romania. Together with Ian M. Cook she initiated a podcasting program at CEU, which resulted in building the first podcasting studio at the university, a Podcast Library and podcasting and sound studies courses introduced for students, staff and faculty. She holds an MA degree from CEU’s Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology.
Attila Mong
Course Director, Cross-Border Investigative Journalism Training for the Western Balkans
Attila is a Berlin-based Hungarian freelance journalist. He works as the Europe correspondent of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an international press freedom organization, and reports on press freedom issues from the EU. He is also an innovation consultant for Germany`s leading media development organization, the DW Akademie and consults digital innovation project all around the world. He is a jury member of the European journalism grant program, Reporters in the Field. In 2013 he finished the prestigious John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship Program and was a Hoover Institution research fellow (2011), both at Stanford University. He authored several investigative books in Hungary and was awarded with the most prestigious journalism prizes in his country (the Pulitzer Memorial Prize for Best Investigative Journalism in 2004 and the Soma Investigative Journalism Prize in 2003.)
Judit Szakács
Outreach Coordinator
Judit Szakács is a researcher with a background in sociology, journalism, and English language and literature. Her main research interests include minority media and minority representation in the mainstream media as well as in social media. She has collaborated with scholars in international research projects in a variety of topics. She co-authored three studies for the European Parliament on disinformation and propaganda. In addition, she works as a media monitor, which provides her with valuable insights into contemporary practices in the Hungarian media. She volunteers as a contributor to the Hungarian corruption database compiled by K-Monitor.
Leo Watkins
Lead Researcher, Uncovering Media Influence in the UK project
Leo is a Media and Communications PhD student at Goldsmiths, University of London, researching Rupert Murdoch and the rise of neoliberalism in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. He previously worked as an analyst at a commercial research firm specializing in technology, media and telecoms, and contributed research to the Parliamentary campaign to persuade UK regulators to stop Rupert Murdoch’s company 21st Century Fox buying Sky plc. He is on the co-ordinating committee of the Media Reform Coalition.