Eliot Higgins Keynote Speaker

Eliot Higgins is an award-winning journalist and founder of the investigative journalism platform, Bellingcat.  He is the author of ‘We Are Bellingcat: An Intelligence Agency for the People‘ (2022), a Sunday Times best seller.

Bellingcat is a fact-checking platform that uses open-source intelligence including videos, maps and pictures to enable citizen journalism on international affairs. Originally focused on Syria and the Middle East with investigations into the Syrian Civil War, Malaysia Air Flight 17 and the poisoning of Russian dissident Sergei Skripal, their focus moved to the invasion of Ukraine where they have continued to debunk propaganda and to investigate important stories.

Originally started as a blog to investigate issues in the Middle East under the pseudonym Brown Moses, Eliot’s venture soon began to attract a considerable following across the world. Today Bellingcat reports are used by myriad media outlets and agencies across the globe to enable better understanding of conflicts in the region and highlight underreported stories.

Eliot was named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s Global Thinkers in 2019 and one of Politico Europe’s top 28 most influential people in Europe in the “Disrupters” category in 2021. He was also awarded the Hanns Joachim Friedrichs Award for excellence in journalism in 2015.   In 2022, he was awarded the Swedish based Monismanien Prize for freedom of speech. He was awarded the Treaties of Nijmegen Medal in 2024 for his innovative contribution to peace and human rights.