Announcing our IJ4EU Freelancer Support Scheme jury

The European Journalism Centre reveals the members of the external independent jury responsible for the evaluation and selection of proposals under the IJ4EU Freelancer Support Scheme in the latest edition of the programme.  The Freelancer Support Scheme is one of the two IJ4EU grants and is designed for teams of journalists working predominantly outside of newsroom structures who collaborate on cross-border investigations on topics of public interest in Europe and beyond.

In the 2022-23 edition of the IJ4EU fund, there were three members of the Freelancer Support Scheme jury. They are accomplished journalists with extensive experience in investigative journalism and collaborative projects. The three jury members assessed and selected the winning proposals for both  the September ‘22 and the January ‘23 open calls of the Freelancer Support Scheme. 

The  14 winners of the second call were announced on 11 April.

Here are the jury members for the Freelancer Support Scheme during the 2022/23 edition of the IJ4EU programme. 

Ruona Meyer is a journalist, researcher and media trainer with over 19 years of experience across Africa, the UK, the Netherlands and Germany. She specialises in solutions journalism training and DEI consultancy for Africa-focused grants and

donor organisations.

Ruona currently manages the Africa Initiative at the Solutions Journalism Network, coordinating multilingual training,reporting and advocacy of the solutions approach across 40 newsrooms in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. The programme has reached over 940 journalists, student journalists and lecturers in newsrooms and universities across the target countries, as well as bespoke partnerships with media nonprofits across the continent that have delivered solutions journalism training curriculum for climate reporting, marginalised populations, environmental reporting, peace and security reporting, and gender-based violence.

In 2013, Ruona was awarded Investigative Journalist of the Year by the Wole Soyinka Center for investigative Journalism. In 2018, she was commissioned by the BBC to work on investigations into pharmaceutical drug cartels in Nigeria. Her television documentary Sweet Sweet Codeine was nominated for an Emmy in 2019. This was the first time a Nigerian film and the BBC World Service production was nominated for the United States' most prestigious television award. 

With bylines also in the Financial Times of London, and Deutsche Welle, Ruona has worked since 2020 as a freelance Editor for Netherlands-based ZAM magazine's Africa investigations desk, coordinating investigations in Liberia, Nigeria, Malawi, and Zimbabwe; she recently began reporting on sociopolitical issues for Germany-based RiffReporter.

Ruona is currently a PhD scholar at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK. Her thesis explores the construct of power dynamics within transcontinental investigative journalism networks. She also designs and partakes in media development research in various capacities: as Visiting Senior Research Associate, Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicines at King's College London, UK, as a Board Member for the New Media Advocacy Programme, New York, USA and on the Advisory Committee of the Nigeria Media Innovation Program, a three-year initiative by US non-profit Media Development Investment Fund.

Pierre Leibovici is a French journalist working for the investigative news outlet Disclose.ngo. He has been working for several years at the intersection of investigative journalism and reader engagement. Prior to Disclose, he was part of the local investigative organisation Mediacités and co-founded a slow-pace news outlet called L'imprévu.

Liubomyra Remazhevska has been working in the media since 2005. She specialises in economic journalism — energy and heavy industry. In 2019-2021, she worked as an analytical editor in the journalistic investigative program "Schemes. Corruption in detail" on Radio Svoboda, in 2021-2022 — as an editor for the investigative journalism agency Slidstvo.Info.

Co-author of a series of investigations into Vladimir Putin's crony, Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk's Russian business. Together with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project published an international investigation into how Viktor Medvedchuk actually received two valuable oil assets in Russia for nothing. In 2021, together with her colleagues from "Schemes" Maksym Savchuk and Oleksandr Chornovalov, she received the highest award of the National investigative journalism competition for the article "Viktor Medvedchuk's American Dream".

Twice laureate of the PRESSZVANIE business circle award in the "Electroenergetics" nomination.

As a reporter, since February 28, she has been filming the consequences of shelling and recording the testimonies of people who survived captivity, occupation and witnessed other war crimes committed by the Russian military on the territory of Ukraine