Team

Advisory Board

Gavin MacFadyen is the director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ), a visiting professor at City University and a research consultant to US feature film and documentary companies. He has previously been director of International Journalism Summer Schools and of The New York conference of Financial and Business Investigative Journalism.

His broadcasting experience includes producer-director of World in Action (Granada TV), Dispatches (Channel 4), Frontline (PBS), and ABC and BBC documentaries,. Much of MacFadyen’s work has covered subject ranging from child labour to the history of the CIA, Watergate to sanctions-busting and the Iraq arms trade. In 1983 and 1993, MacFadyen produced the films The Keep and Ulterior Motives respectively.

Robin Hopkins is a barrister at London’s 11KBW chambers who specialises in the Freedom of Information Act, Environmental Information Regulations and the Data Protection Act. Hopkins advises the Information Commissioner’s Office, local authorities and other public bodies on policy changes, consultations and equalities duties.

Hopkins co-edits the Information Law Reports and Panopticon, a leading information law blog, and is on the editorial board of the Freedom of Information Journal and of the Law Society’s Freedom of Information Handbook (2012 edition). Robin was instructed by the Treasury Solicitor in the 2011 Building Schools for the Future litigation and has experience of judicial review permission hearings and statutory appeals in the High Court. He has published articles on constitutional issues and Article 9 of the ECHR.   

Duncan Campbell is an investigative journalist, television producer, author and consultant. He has published exposes in the areas of defence, civil liberties, secrecy issues, policing and computer forensics. Campbell also exposed the role of the NSA’s Yorkshire Menwith Hill Station in tapping worldwide communications (1980) and secret plans for the first ever British spy satellite, codenamed “Zircon” (1987).

Campbell’s reports in the Guardian on tobacco companies’ use of smuggling and tax evasion and his evidence to the parliamentary committee on health resulted in a government investigation into British American Tobacco. Campbell was editor and then chairman of the political weekly magazine New Statesman for more than a decade. He founded the television production company IPTV Ltd in 1990, covering corruption in sport and in customer services, and medical fraud and malpractice.

Nick Davies is an investigative journalist, author and documentary maker with an exemplary record of exposing corruption. Davies was presented with the Paul Foot award in 2012 for his exceptional work for the Guardian in exposing News of the World phone hacking. Davies has also received the first Martha Gelhorn Prize for Journalism (1999) and was for Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards (2000).

Davies has published five books based on his investigations, including White Lies: The True Story of Clarence Brandley, Presumed Guilty in the American South in 1991 and Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media in 2008.

Genevieve Maitland Hudson has wide-ranging experience of working in social enterprise. She worked as a senior associate at the Young Foundation on a start up community learning venture. She is now head of social impact at The U. In 2010 she founded GLUE, a social enterprise working with young people excluded, or at risk of exclusion, from school that will be expanding its programme delivery across London in September 2012.

Genevieve also works as a consultant and has been involved in service design and evaluation design for a number of charities and social enterprises including the Well Centre in Streatham and the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. Genevieve has lectured at the universities of Oxford, Roehampton and Birkbeck, University of London and at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Des Freedman is a member of national council of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom. He is a reader in communication and cultural studies at Goldsmith’s College, University of London. His interest centres on the relationship between the media and power together with the political and economic contexts of media regulation and policymaking. Freedman is editor of the Global Media and Communication journal.

Staff

Brendan Montague, co-founder and executive director of Request Initiative, is an investigative journalist with more than a decade of experience working for The Sunday Times, The Mail on Sunday and The Daily Mail. He has published in The Times, The Observer, The Guardian, The Independent, the New Statesman and dozens of other publications. Brendan is described by The Times as a “freedom of information expert”. In the last year he has attended training provided by the Campaign for Freedom of Information, the Centre for Investigative Journalism and the Guardian’s Masterclass in Investigative Journalism. Brendan has used FoIA to substantiate environmental and political stories. He has also lectured at City University and Goldsmiths College on the subject of Freedom of Information.

Greg Muttitt is a campaigner and investigative reporter. His book, Fuel on the Fire – Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq (Random House, 2011), draws on more than 1,000 documents obtained under the British and US freedom of information acts. He has expertise in using FOIA at every stage, with a number of public authorities, and has twice won cases at the Information Rights Tribunal, the second time representing himself against the Cabinet Office and Information Commissioner. He has worked as Campaigns and Policy Director of War on Want and was previously Co-director of Platform.

Lucas Amin, Request’s co-founder and operations director, graduated with a first class honours BA in media and communications at Goldsmiths College in 2010. Since working for Request he has received training from the Campaign for Freedom of Information, PA consulting and the Guardian’s Masterclass in Investigative Journalism delivered by FoIA author Heather Brooke and the newspaper’s Special Projects Editor, Paul Lewis.

Kat Lay is a tabloid journalist experienced in using the Freedom of Information Act to generate stories. She currently works for The People, and used to work at News of the World, where she was shortlisted for Young Journalist of the Year at The Press Awards. She has also worked as a media law lecturer, and led freelance projects for the National Union of Journalists.

Our team receives the latest training from the Campaign for Freedom of Information and are networked into practicing FoIA gatekeepers. We have a network of lawyers who are available pro bono or at discount rates to support more complex challenges.