Board and Advisers

The Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) is a non-profit, registered charity (no.1118602) based at City University London. The CIJ was founded in 2003 by working journalists to provide an annual summer school of investigative journalism. It was registered as a charity in 2007.

The organisation grew as it undertook much wider training activities in the UK and abroad and now has four paid staff and offers opportunities for interns. The CIJ helped to found and supports the work of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, also based at City University London.

Gavin MacFadyen - Director
Gavin MacFadyen has worked on over 50 investigative television programmes, for PBS Frontline, Granada Television’s World in Action, the BBC’s Fine Cut, Panorama, The Money Programme and 24 Hours, and Channel 4’s Dispatches. He has investigated stories on child labour, pollution and despoliation of the environment, torture of political prisoners, neo-Nazis in  Britain, Contra murders in Nicaragua, UK industrial accidents, Chinese criminal organisations, a history of the CIA, maritime piracy, election frauds in South America, mines in South Africa, and Frank Sinatra and organised crime.

Elaine Potter - Chair
Elaine Potter is an author and was an investigative reporter with the Sunday Times Insight Team which exposed the Thalidomide and the DC-10 tragedies. She has been particularly active in human and civil rights, freedom of expression, open governance and education and in the support for investigative reporting.

James Lee
James Lee has been an entrepreneur, executive and consultant in film, television, newspapers and book publishing. He was involved in the finance and production of more than 30 feature films including many British film classics. He was Chairman of Scottish Screen, a director of the UK Film Council and is on the board of a large East African media company. He is Chairman of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, based at City University London.

David Leigh
David Leigh is the investigations editor of the Guardian and the recipient of many awards including the Paul Foot prize, What the Papers Say Judges Award, and the Daniel Pearl Award. His work includes investigations into BAE, Trafigura, parliamentary corruption, the Al-Yamamah arms contract scandal, and the perjury and subsequent conviction of the Conservative defence minister Jonathan Aitken. He is the Anthony Sampson Professor of Reporting at City University London.

Gavin Millar QC
Gavin Millar is a Council of Europe expert on freedom of expression. He specialises in discrimination and trade union law, and election law. Much of his media work is for clients asserting free speech rights as well as defamation, privacy, contempt and reporting-restriction cases. He is the author of Media Law and Human Rights, and he regularly speaks and advises on media law at Strasbourg and in the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe.

Brian Basham
Brian Basham is known today, primarily as an entrepreneur and financial commentator, but he made his name as a leading communications specialist. He was a financial journalist, investigator and analyst with the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and The Times before he moved into corporate communications, where he specialised in investigation-backed advice on takeover bids. He is founder of a number of companies and chairman of the research house Equity Development. He has been active on the boards of a number of charities.

Michael Langley
Michael Langley is a Chartered Accountant with extensive commercial experience primarily in the computer industry and was the finance director of Psion PLC for many years.  He has served as a trustee on a number of charities and joined the board in May 2012 to oversee the financial management and control of the CIJ.

Christopher Hird
Christopher Hird is the Managing Editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism as well as a leading figure in UK independent documentary making. He is a former chair of the Sheffield International Documentary Foundation, was the founding chair of the Channel Four BRITDOC Foundation and is a trustee of the Grierson Trust and the Wincott Foundation. In 2008 he set up Dartmouth Films which concentrates on finding new ways of funding, producing and distributing documentaries which aim to achieve social and public policy change.

Advisers

Advisers for the CIJ include: Lowell Bergman, George Brock, Duncan Campbell, Raj Bairoliya, Ray Fitzwalter, Michael Gillard, Isabel Hilton, Andrew Jennings, Jeff Katz, Phillip Knightley, Paul Lashmar, David Miller and John Pilger.