Who we are

STAFF

MARK CURTIS, Director

Mark is the author of five books about British foreign policy, including Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World, Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses and, most recently, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam. These books, which have drawn on the British declassified documents, have been widely acclaimed as uncovering numerous hidden episodes in the UK’s post-1945 foreign policy and for rewriting the true history of Britain’s role in the world in this period.

Mark is a former Research Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and was visiting fellow at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales in Paris and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik in Bonn. He is a graduate of Goldsmiths’ College, University of London and postgraduate of the London School of Economics.

Mark has written as a freelance journalist for various media for 30 years. He also worked in the international development NGO world for 25 years. He was previously director of the World Development Movement (now Global Justice Now) and head of policy at the international NGOs, ActionAid and Christian Aid. From 2005-18 Mark managed Curtis Research, his own research consultancy covering international development and foreign policy issues. He conducted field research in 15 African countries, visiting the continent 50 times, and produced over 130 reports for over 40 NGOs.

PHIL MILLER, editor

Phil is an investigative journalist, author and filmmaker. His book, Keenie Meenie, exposed one of Britain’s most powerful mercenary companies and led to a Metropolitan Police war crimes inquiry.

Phil’s coverage of the UK military has triggered three Whitehall reviews, ordered by defence secretary Ben Wallace and then prime minister David Cameron. He was a specialist researcher for the BAFTA-nominated Channel 4 documentary Massacre at Ballymurphy.

JOHN MCEVOY, acting head of investigations

John McEvoy is an investigative journalist, historian, and filmmaker whose work focuses on British foreign policy and Latin America.

His PhD was on Britain’s Secret Wars in Colombia between 1948 and 2009, and he is currently working on a documentary about Britain’s role in the rise of Augusto Pinochet.

John has written about recent British intervention in Chile, Brazil, and Colombia in the International History Review and the Contemporary British History journal.

He has also contributed to the Canary, Tribune, Jacobin, Brasil Wire, Revista Forum, and FAIR, and reported from Venezuela, Colombia, and France. His work has been presented as evidence in the UK Parliament and UN Security Council.

VICKI THOMAS, HEAD OF COMMUNICATIONS

Vicki Thomas founded and manages Declassified UK’s membership programme, playing a key role in expanding our reach to broader audiences.

Her work prioritises ethical fundraising and collaborative efforts aimed at strengthening and uniting the independent media sector.

Seeing a need for more support in fundraising and outreach, Vicki began her journey in alternative media with the Independent Media Association. Here she collaborated with various organisations to promote their work and connect them with wider audiences.

REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS

RICHARD NORTON-TAYLOR

Richard is a British editor, journalist and playwright, and the doyen of British national security reporting. He wrote for the Guardian on defence and security matters and was the newspaper’s security editor for three decades.

Richard won the 1986 and 1994 Freedom of Information Campaign awards. In 2010, with fellow Guardian journalist, Ian Cobain, he was awarded a Human Rights Campaign of the Year Award from Liberty for their “investigation into Britain’s complicity in the use of torture”.

His books include: The Ponting Affair; Blacklist, The Inside Story of Political Vetting; In Defence of the Realm? The case for Accountable Security and Intelligence Services; A Conflict of Loyalties, an account of GCHQ and the ban on trade union membership there; and Truth is A Difficult Concept, based on the evidence revealed by the Scott arms-to-Iraq inquiry.

Richard has also written a number of award-winning plays, including the “Colour of Justice”, taken from the inquiry into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, and is on the Board of Liberty.

ANNE CADWALLADER

Anne Cadwallader has been a journalist in Ireland, North and South, for the last 40 years, working for the BBC, RTE, The Irish Press, and Reuters.

She was previously an advocacy case worker at the Pat Finucane Centre, a non-party political, anti-sectarian human rights group advocating a non-violent resolution of the conflict in Ireland.

She is also the author of Holy Cross – The Untold Story (Brehon Press, 2004) and Lethal Allies: British Collusion in Ireland (Mercier Press, 2013).

She has testified before the US Congress and British, Australian and Irish parliamentary committees.

PETER OBORNE

Peter Oborne is one of Britain’s leading political journalists. He resigned in 2015 from his position as chief political columnist for the Daily Telegraph and now works as a freelancer, also contributing to Middle East Eye and Byline Times.

His latest book is The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam. His previous books include The Triumph of the Political Class, The Rise of Political Lying, Why the West is Wrong about Nuclear Iran and The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism.

Claire Lauterbach

Claire Lauterbach is an independent investigative journalist and producer.

She is the former Head of Investigations at Privacy International where she investigated the use and abuse of surveillance and military technologies, and a former Senior Investigator at Global Witness.

Claire previously investigated war crimes in Goma, DR Congo for Human Rights Watch.

Namir Shabibi

Namir Shabibi is an investigative journalist / producer, visiting lecturer in politics and doctoral candidate at the University of Westminster, exploring the role of covert paramilitary action in the “War on Terror”.

His investigations have uncovered covert paramilitary programmes by the CIA and MI6 in Kenya and Yemen, and he has published reports and documentaries for the BBC, the Bureau and VICE, among others.

Namir also undertakes research for public-interest legal cases and provides expert witness statements on counter-terrorism. He previously worked for Reprieve, and the International Committee of the Red Cross in Guantánamo Bay and Darfur.

Hamza yusuf

Hamza Yusuf is a British-Palestinian writer and journalist whose work focuses on Palestine.

He has reported on daily life under occupation for Palestinians including home demolitions and forced expulsion and the conditions for Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

He has also extensively covered the British political establishment’s legislation and policies towards Palestine. He has also contributed to Tribune Magazine, Jacobin, +972 Magazine and New Internationalist.

Des Freedman

Des Freedman is Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London and the Co-Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre.

He is the author of books including The Politics of Media Policy (2008), The Contradictions of Media Power (2014), Misunderstanding the Internet (with James Curran and Natalie Fenton, 2016) and The Media Manifesto (with Natalie Fenton, Justin Schlosberg and Lina Dencik, 2020).

He is a founding member of the UK Media Reform Coalition.

BOARD

IONA CRAIG

Iona Craig is a British-Irish journalist whose work focuses on Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula. Iona lived in Sana’a from 2010 to 2015, covering Yemen’s revolution, America’s growing covert war in the region, and the civil war that began in 2014.

She regularly returns to Yemen to cover the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis for TV, radio and print. Iona’s work has won numerous awards, including the Orwell Prize for journalism and the Martha Gellhorn Prize.

Her investigation of a Navy SEAL raid in a remote Yemeni village won the 2018 George Polk Award for foreign reporting, the most esteemed US mark of distinction in international journalism after the Pulitzer Prize.

In addition to her journalistic work, Iona heads up the Yemen Data Project, which collates open-source data on the Saudi-led coalition air war and political violence in Yemen’s ground war. Before becoming a journalist, Iona rode and trained racehorses professionally for more than a decade in the UK, Australia and Ireland.

ANDREW FEINSTEIN

Andrew is a former MP of the African National Congress in South Africa who resigned in protest at the party’s refusal to allow a meaningful investigation into a £5bn arms deal, which was tainted by allegations of significant, high level corruption.

He is the author of the best-selling After the Party: Corruption, the ANC and South Africa’s Uncertain Future and the critically acclaimed The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade which has been made into an award-winning feature documentary film.
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He is Executive Director of Shadow World Investigations (formerly Corruption Watch UK) and serves on the Boards of The Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa and Lighthouse Projects.

kate hudson

Kate Hudson was the general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament from 2010-2024 and is a peace and anti-war campaigner nationally and internationally.

By training a historian, she was awarded a doctorate by the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, and worked in the field of eastern Europe and post-communist politics. She was Head of Social and Policy Studies at London South Bank University from 2003 to 2010 when she took up her post at CND.

She is the author of a number of books, including European Communism Since 1989 (Palgrave Macmillan), Breaking the South Slav Dream: The Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia (Pluto Press), CND – Now More Than Ever: The Story of a Peace Movement (Vision Paperbacks), The New European Left: a socialism for the twenty-first century? (Palgrave Macmillan).

Widely published in the media and with frequent radio and television appearances, she is also an editorial board member of Transform – a journal of the radical left (Public Reading Rooms), and the Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe (Routledge).

taimour lay

Taimour Lay is a practising barrister at Garden Court Chambers in London, specialising in immigration, human rights and and public law.

He formerly spent a decade as a journalist and political analyst, running investigations in Sri Lanka, Maldives, Uganda, DRC, Somalia, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

He was a correspondent for Africa Confidential and The Africa Report and wrote for BBC Focus on Africa, The Guardian and Corporate Watch, among others. He advises on media law.

RICHARD NORTON-TAYLOR

Richard has also written a number of award-winning plays, including the “Colour of Justice”, taken from the inquiry into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, and is on the Board of Liberty.

ADVISERS

Stella Assange

Stella Assange is a human rights lawyer who was born in South Africa. In March 2022 she married Julian Assange with whom she has two children, born 2017 and 2019. She joined Assange’s legal team in 2011.

In 2023, Stella was awarded the Pimentel Fonseca Prize in Naples and received the Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Public Discourse awarded by The Hist at Trinity College Dublin, on behalf of herself and Julian Assange.

VICTORIA BRITTAIN

Victoria worked at the Guardian for many years, notably as associate foreign editor and editor of its Third World Review section in the 1980s.

She has lived and worked in Washington, Saigon, Algiers, and Nairobi, and reported from many African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries. She is the author of a number of books on Africa, co-author of Moazzam Begg’s Guantanamo memoir, Enemy Combatant, author and co-author of two Guantanamo verbatim plays, and most recently of Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women of the War on Terror.
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She is vice-chair of the education charity, Prisoners of Conscience. Her latest book, Love and Resistance in the films of Mai Masri is published by Palgrave Macmillan.

NOAM CHOMSKY

Noam Chomsky is a US political theorist and activist, the founder of modern linguistics, and one of the most cited scholars in modern history.

Chomsky is internationally recognised as one of the most critically engaged public intellectuals alive today.

He is critic of US foreign policy and its ambitions for geopolitical hegemony and the neoliberal turn of global capitalism, which he identifies in terms of class warfare waged from above against the needs and interests of the majority.

Chomsky is also an incisive critic of the ideological role of the mainstream corporate mass media which, he maintains, “manufactures consent” toward the desirability of capitalism and the political powers supportive of it.

For decades institute professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he is now laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona.

IAN COBAIN

Ian is a British journalist, best known for his investigations into human rights abuses during counter-terrorism investigations and the culture of British secrecy.

He was previously an investigative reporter for the Guardian. He has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Journalism and won the Martha Gellhorn Prize and the Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism. Ian has reported on six wars, including the 1991 Gulf War, and in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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In September 2005, he revealed that the UK was supporting the CIA’s rendition programme. His books include Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture and The History Thieves: Secrets, Lies and the Shaping of a Modern Nation.

NATALIE FENTON

Natalie is Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths’, University of London and and is co-director of the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy.

Her work focuses on the ways in which technological, economic and social change is reconfiguring news journalism and shaping the dynamics of the public sphere and public culture.

This research led to her involvement as a founding member of the Media Reform Coalition and as vice-chair of the Board of Directors for the campaign group Hacked Off – both of which campaign for a free, plural and accountable media.

JAYATI GHOSH

Jayati Ghosh taught economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi for nearly 35 years, and since January 2021 she has been Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. She has authored and/or edited 20 books and more than 200 scholarly articles.

Jayati was the Executive Secretary of www.networkideas.org from 2002 to 2021 and has consulted for international organisations including ILO, UNDP, and UNCTAD. She is a member of the UN High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs, the Commission on Global Economic Transformation of INET and the International Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT).

In 2021 she was appointed to the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All and in 2022, she was appointed to the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, mandated to provide a vision for international cooperation to deal with current and future challenges. A world-renowned economist, Jayati also writes regularly for popular media, including newspapers, journals and blogs.

JOE GLENTON

Joe is a defence journalist and award-winning author. He served in the British army from 2004 to 2010 including in Afghanistan and East Africa.

He was the first British soldier to publicly refuse to return to Afghanistan on legal and moral grounds, eventually serving five months in the UK’s military prison for defying orders. The experience left him a strident critic of UK foreign policy.

After leaving the army and jail Joe studied International Relations and, later, Veterans Studies. His book Soldier Box, published by Verso, won the Bread and Roses political non-fiction prize in 2014. Joe’s current interests include veterans in the UK and far-right activism with the military.

He works as a communications officer for the armed forces watchdog Forces Watch and trains, teaches and competes in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

GLENN GREENWALD

Glenn Greenwald is a New York Times best-selling author, Pullitzer Prize-winning journalist and one of the world’s most influential commentators on US and international affairs.

His books include Securing Democracy: My Fight for Press Freedom and Justice in Bolsonaro’s Brazil (2021) and No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the US Surveillance State (2014). Glenn came to world attention in 2013 when he published a series of articles while at the Guardian based on classified documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

In 2014 he co-founded a ground-breaking US-based media organisation, The Intercept, resigning in 2020. Glenn’s written work can now be found on substack.

HALA JABER

Hala is a Lebanese-British journalist. She was born in West Africa and worked for many years for the Sunday Times.

Hala was awarded the Amnesty International Journalist of the Year Award in 2003. She also won Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2005 and 2006 for her coverage of the Iraq War, and in 2012 for her coverage of the Libyan uprising. She co-won the Martha Gellhorn Prize for her work in Iraq in 2007.
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Her first book, Hezbollah: Born With a Vengeance, was published in 1997. The book describes the rise and political agenda of Hezbollah against the background of Lebanese history from 1970 to 1997. Her second book, The Flying Carpet to Baghdad: One Woman’s Fight for Two Orphans of War, was published in 2009. The book chronicles her efforts to help two girls during the Iraq war.

LOWKEY

Lowkey is a hip hop artist and political campaigner. He is part of the super group Mongrel alongside members of the Arctic Monkeys, Babyshambles and Reverend and the Makers. His critically acclaimed music has received millions of streams on Spotify, sold over 25k albums digitally and garnered over 45 million YouTube views.

His independently released album Soundtrack to the Struggle (2011) charted #6 in the UK RnB chart. Lowkey’s community work around the Grenfell fire led to his recent appointment as head of performing arts for the Kids on The Green charity, assisting the healing of bereaved, surviving and local children in the community through the arts.

He is a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop The War Coalition, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Racial Justice Network.

KENNY MacAskill

Kenny MacAskill is a leading Scottish political figure who served as the country’s justice secretary from 2007-14. Kenny was the MP in Westminster for East Lothian from 2019-24 and was deputy leader of the Alba party, which campaigns for Scottish independence. He served in the Scottish parliament as an MSP for over 17 years.

Kenny is also author of several books including Radical Scotland: Uncovering Scotland’s Radical History, Building a Nation: Post Devolution Nationalism in Scotland and The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search for Justice. Born in Edinburgh, Kenny is a solicitor by training.

STEFANIA MAURIZI

Stefania Maurizi is an investigative journalist contributing to the major Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano, after working for the last 14 years for la Repubblica and l’Espresso. She has worked on all WikiLeaks document releases since 2009, and partnered with Glenn Greenwald to reveal the Snowden files about Italy.

She has interviewed A.Q.Khan, the father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, revealed a €1.2m condolence payment agreement between the US government and the family of the Italian aid worker, Giovanni Lo Porto, killed in a US drone strike, and she investigated the harsh working conditions of Pakistani workers in a major Italian garment factory in Karachi.

Stefania has started a multi-jurisdictional freedom of information litigation effort to defend the right of the press to access the full set of documents on the Julian Assange and WikiLeaks case.

She is the author of two books – Dossier WikiLeaks: Segreti Italiani and Una Bomba: Dieci Storie.

LAURA PIDCOCK

Laura Pidcock is an activist from the North East of England. She was formerly the Labour MP for North West Durham and Shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights under Jeremy Corbyn.

Laura is currently the National Secretary of the Peoples Assembly, an anti-austerity campaign movement in the UK. Previous to becoming an MP, she was an anti-racism education worker and remains passionate about fighting racism.

MADAWI AL-RASHEED

Madawi is visiting Professor at the Middle East Centre (MEC) at the London School of Economics. She is a former Research Fellow at the Open Society Foundation, Professor of Anthropology of Religion at King’s College London and Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.

Since joining the MEC, Madawi has been conducting research on mutations among Saudi Islamists after the 2011 Arab uprisings. This research focuses on the new reinterpretations of Islamic texts prevalent among a small minority of Saudi reformers and activism in the pursuit of democratic governance and civil society.

Her edited book, Salman’s Legacy: The Dilemmas of a New Era was published by Hurst in 2018. Madawi has published several articles in academic journals and regularly contributes to international television and print media.

PAUL ROGERS

Paul is Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford and Oxford Research Group’s (ORG) Senior Fellow in International Security.

He has worked in the field of international security, arms control and political violence for 40 years. Paul lectures at universities and defence colleges in several countries and has written or edited 30 books, including Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010), Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2008) and Irregular War: New Threats from the Margins (I.B Tauris, 2017).

Paul is a regular commentator on global security issues in the national and international media and is openDemocracy’s International Security Advisor, writing a weekly column for the web journal since September 2001.

YANIS VAROUFAKIS

Yanis Varoufakis is an author, academic economist, parliamentarian and political leader. He leads the MeRa25 party in Greece and is co-founder of the pan-European movement DiEM25 as well as the Progressive International.

An academic economist who served as Greece’s Finance Minister in 2015, Varoufakis is the author of best-selling books including Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (2023), Another Now (2020), Adults in the Room (2017), Talking to My Daughter (2017), And the Wake Suffer What They Must? (2016) and The Global Minotaur (2011).

HILARY WAINWRIGHT

Hilary Wainwright is a writer, editor and a socialist activist. Her books include Arguments for A New Left; Answering the Free Market Right; Labour: A Tale of Two Parties; Reclaim the State: Experiences of Popular Power; Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism and most recently A New Politics From the Left.

She is a co-editor of Red Pepper; a Senior Research Associate of the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University and an Associate of the Transnational Institute.

VRON WARE

Vron Ware is a professor of sociology and gender studies at Kingston University. She was editor of Searchlight magazine from 1981 to 1983, and has worked intermittently as a journalist and photographer. She has also had teaching and research positions at the University of Greenwich, Yale and the Open University.

Her books and other publications span a wide range of issues from feminism and anti-racism (Beyond the Pale: white women, racism and history (1992/2015); Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics and Culture (2002, co-authored with Les Back) to militarism and the impact of war on society.

Her most recent: Military Migrants: Fighting for YOUR Country (2012), is a study of Commonwealth soldiers serving in the contemporary British Army. She is currently leading a funded research project called ‘The Military in our Midst’, which investigates the social costs and consequences of permanent war preparation.

Declassified UK’s outputs do not necessarily reflect the view of its board or advisers.

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