Velma Saric is a researcher, journalist, peace-building expert and human rights defender from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Velma is the Founder and President of the Post-Conflict Research Center and the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Balkan Diskurs. As a researcher and producer she has worked on numerous publications and films about the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, including Uspomene 677, In the Land of Blood and Honey by Angelina Jolie, and I Came to Testify and War Redefined from the PBS series Women, War & Peace. Velma is a Columbia University fellow as part of the Alliance for Historical Dialogue and Accountability Fellowship Program. In addition, she is a fellow of the Robert Bosch Foundation and the Global Post’s GroundTruth Project.

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Leila Bicakcic is one of founders and CEO of Center for Investigative Reporting (CIN), first investigative center to be established in the Balkans. Today, CIN is an independent media agency dedicated to investigating and reporting on corruption, organized crime and nexus between political elites and criminal circles. Leila is responsible for strategic and programmatic planning, fundraising, outreach and donor relations, overall administration and financial management. Prior to CIN, she worked for OSCE, UNICEF and the American Bar Association (ABA/CEELI), where she spent nine years as finance manager and trainer. A Sarajevo native, she studied basic physics and economics at the University of Sarajevo.

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An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, Sanjana Hattotuwa has since 2002 used, studied and advocated Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, reconciliation, human rights & democratic governance.

He founded in 2006 and till June 2020 curated the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka’s first civic media website. From 2002-2020 he was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives, based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. At CPA, Sanjana pioneered the use of social media for activism and advocacy, as well as digital security training for human rights activists since 2010.

He specialises in, advises and trains on social media communications strategy, web-based activism, online advocacy and grounded social media research.

Through the ICT4Peace Foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland, Sanjana helps strengthen information management during crises and programmes to address violent extremism online. For nearly a decade, this included leading the Foundation’s work with the United Nations.

Since 2008, he has worked in South Asia, South East Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Balkans to capture, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths in austere, violent contexts.

He is currently pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand on the intersection of social media, political communication, violence generation and the realisation of Sri Lanka’s democratic potential.

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