SEASON FOUR
Our Season Four is being put together by a mix of old and new team members, from reporters to producers. Here is who joined On Spec for Season Four:
Nadene Ghouri
Nadene Ghouri is the host of On Spec’s Season Four.
An award-winning journalist specialising in human interest and human rights issues, Nadene freelances for major publications including The Guardian and The Mail On Sunday and is a former correspondent of both the BBC and Al Jazeera English.
Nadene has reported from around the globe, including the Middle East, Africa and Asia. She lived for 7 years in Afghanistan, and is widely regarded as a specialist on Afghan issues.
Today she also works as a screenwriter and is a New York Times bestselling non-fiction author.
Nadene loves stories which bring a human face to the pressing issues and complex politics of the day. Those which enable us to better understand the human condition and the universal themes which connect us all. As such, she is thrilled to be guest hosting On Spec Season Four – The Walls We Build.
Astrig Agopian
Astrig Agopian is a French-Armenian freelance journalist based between Paris and Yerevan. Born and raised in Marseille, she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Master’s degree in Journalism and International Affairs from Sciences Po Paris. She works as a reporter and camerawoman and has been published in various media (print, radio, TV) : Agence France-Presse, Euronews, Radio Télévision Suisse,The Guardian and others.
Kukka Maria Ahokas
Kukka Maria Ahokas is Finnish author and journalist for the culture magazine Voima. Principally, she writes reports and chronicles for the print press. In addition to her native Finnish language, she works in Spanish, English and Swedish. She has close ties to Peru, where she has lived on several occasions. In 2021, she works in Lima with a grant from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, writing a non-fiction book on Gen Z political activism.
Judith Chetrit
Judith Chetrit is a Paris-based features writer and audio documentary producer. She mostly covers labour issues and public policies. Her clients include French public radio (Radio France, France Culture…), Le Monde Diplomatique, and specialized publications such as magazines focused on social and economic issues.
Moritz Heidegger
Moritz Heidegger is an audio engineer and composer based in Vienna, Austria. He is currently working as a freelancer in a broad spectrum of fields ranging from music production, recording, mixing and mastering to sound design and film scoring, working with pretty much everything involving sound with great love for detail. He has been studying sound engineering since 2016 at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.
Angel Bwalya Kasabo
Angel Bwalya Kasabo is a radio presenter at Radio Christian Voice in Zambia. He grew up in Lusaka, and was a fan of radio since he was a child, although back then he did not see himself as having a career in radio. A graduate of Copperstone University in Kitwe, Zambia, Kasabo is an avid sports player as well, enjoying football, tennis, and swimming.
Bartholomäus Laffert
Bartholomäus Laffert, born in 1995, is a freelance journalist currently based in Addis Ababa. He´s mainly working for radio and print media on migration and the externalization of the EU’s outer borders. For this purpose, he traveled in the past years to the Balkans, East Africa, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and the Central Med. He´s reporting for outlets like Der Spiegel, Deutsche Welle, The Guardian, The New Humanitarian, ZDF and Deutschlandfunk.
Kassandra Lau
Kassandra Lau is a journalist based in Tucson, Arizona who has spent the last decade producing stories for newsrooms across the southwest and southern United States. Most recently, she produced a public affairs program for the local PBS affiliate that covered issues across Arizona that included the opioid epidemic, education and politics.
Alexandra Tyan
Alexandra Tyan is a Russian-born multimedia journalist currently based in Rome, Italy. A Sciences Po and LSE graduate, she has worked with Coda Story, GIJN, France Télévisions, her work has been published in The Guardian, The Calvert Journal, The Moscow Times, RFI, France Info, Istituto Affari Internazionali, and VC.ru. She also co-produces Obvious, a podcast about overlooked aspects of obvious things. She reports and writes in English, Russian, French and Italian.
Lewis Yuyi
Born in Livingstone, Zambia, Lewis Yuyi is a radio presenter and producer currently with Radio Christian Voice. Previously, Yuyi was a presenter and producer with Zambezi FM, which had a listenership not only in Zambia but also in nearby Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia. Yuyi is the youngest of seven children.
SEASON THREE
Our Season Three was a big team effort. Our staffer Özge Sebzeci reported our Turkey story and everyone on the team contributed to the stories. Fariba Nawa was the editor-in-chief, Umar Farooq and Alisa Reznick were editors and Oscar Durand was the main producer. We also worked with freelance journalists, sound engineers and an illustrator, all of which are listed below:
Craig Billmeier
From recording punk bands in his garage to touring with Joe Biden as a sound recordist, Craig has been a working audio engineer for over 20 years. He has been to all seven continents in pursuit of music and adventure, and is also the 2008 Air Guitar World Champion. He currently lives with his family in southern Oregon.
Levi Bridges
Levi Bridges is an American audio journalist currently based between Mexico City and Moscow, Russia. He’s reported for outlets like Marketplace and Public Radio International, and produced audio documentaries in English and Spanish for NPR’s Radio Ambulante.
Patrice Citera
Patrice Citera is a freelance journalist based in Kinshasa, the DR Congo. He reports for a number of outlets, including Euronews, Deutshwelle English, and Voice of America.
He spent 11 years (2003-2013) with the BBC World Service reporting news and current affairs in English, French, and Swahili, initially in radio and later online and television.
He has also reported for the Associated Press and the New Humanitarian (formerly IRIN News).
Alice Driver
Alice Driver is the author of More or Less Dead and the translator of Abecedario de Juárez. Her long-form reporting, radio, and essays have appeared in National Geographic, Time, Oxford American, Longreads, and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Giovana Fleck
Giovana Fleck is a journalist from the extreme south of Brazil, currently residing in Amsterdam. She has worked as a reporter and video editor with independent media that focuses on the narratives of social impact, women’s rights, indigenous causes, and the environment. Fleck is currently freelancing while in pursuit of her Master’s degree in political communication.
Hatiye Garip
Hatiye illustrated our third season, and the art for our website. You can see her works at hatiyegarip.com.
Lisa Jane Harding
Lisa Jane Harding is a British breaking news reporter based in Hong Kong, where she has lived for the past 18-years.
She has worked as a freelance correspondent for Deutsche Presse-Agentur, covering the anti-government protest movement and subsequent political fallout in the region, as China speeds-up the ex-British colony’s integration into the country.
Her work has appeared in CNN, South China Morning Post, and several major news publications in Germany, Australia, US, and the Middle East.
Theo Merz
Theo Merz is a British journalist based in Moscow. His work has appeared in The Economist, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, VICE, and other news outlets.
He was previously a Russia correspondent for Agence France-Presse, and has also reported for the news agency from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Malaysia.
Rajesh Mukkath
Rajesh Mukkath is a Chennai-based sound designer with more than 15 years of experience working in feature films, television and radio. This is his first experience working with podcasts and he is very enthusiastic about exploring potentials of sound design in this visual-free medium.
Prachi Pinglay-Plumber
Prachi Pinglay-Plumber is an independent journalist based in Bengaluru, India. She has reported on political, social, and cultural issues for BBC News, The Hindu and Outlook magazine from the western Indian states of Maharashtra, Goa, and Gujarat.
Agrarian crisis, women’s rights, the environment, and culture have been recurring elements in her reporting. Trained in radio, she occasionally dabbles in teaching at journalism schools and community radio projects.
Prachi is passionate about all things Mumbai, Bollywood, street food, secularism, and her toddler son Noor.
Kunal Shankar
Kunal Shankar is an award-winning investigative journalist passionate about reporting on caste discrimination, bureaucratic, judicial, and corporate fraud and climate change. He began his career in television in his hometown, Chennai, and has worked for ABC News Radio, Frontline magazine, India Today, and collaborated with American Public Media. Kunal loves beaches, having grown up by the sea in Chennai, and dabbles in South Indian recipes occasionally
SEASON ONE
