Migration, Migrants and the Media
Daniela Siebeck, Lyse Doucet, David Hickman, Alan Travis, Charlotte O’Brien, Sultan Barakat

• Saturday 18 June 2016, 2.00PM to 3:30pm
• Free admission
  Booking required
• Ron Cooke Hub, University of York (map|getting to campus)
• Wheelchair accessible

Event details

How are editorial decisions by the media influencing both our response to the refugee crisis and the treatment of refugees when they reach new lands? Speakers include:

• Daniela Siebeck, Coordinator for Refugee Aid, Germany
• Lyse Doucet, Chief International Correspondent, BBC
• Dr David Hickman, Department of TFTV, University of York
• Alan Travis, The Guardian
• Charlotte O’Brien, York Law School, University of York
• Sultan Barakat, Founding Director of the Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit, University of York (Chair)

About the speakers

Daniela Siebeck, M.A., is Refugee Aid Coordinator with Islamic Relief Germany (IRD, Cologne), a humanitarian NGO and member of the Islamic Relief Worldwide (Birmingham) family providing humanitarian aid in 40 countries around the World.
In the past 10 years Daniela worked as international specialist advisor with the German Technical Cooperation’s crisis prevention advisory service (CPAS-GIZ Yemen) and as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) manager with extractive industries, OMV E&P, in Yemen and UAE and refugee aid advisor in Germany. She established a CSR unit, developed the community relations strategy, carried out security risk assessments and implemented conflict sensitive development projects in Yemen. Coupling expertise on tribal arbitration and fluency in Arabic she acted as the company’s on site conflict resolution delegate. Some of her work include a documentary on a Yemeni drama group production and performance of Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise” in Yemen and research on Kidnappings of Foreigners in Yemen (WOCMES 2010). Until recently Daniela has been increasingly involved in asylum advice, counseling and emergency shelter management in Germany with a welfare agency accredited by the Federal Ministry of Migration and Refugees (BAMF).

Lyse Doucet is an award winning Chief International Correspondent and Senior Presenter for BBC World News television and BBC World Service Radio. She is often deployed to anchor special news coverage from the field and interview world leaders. Lyse has covered major stories in the Middle East for more than 20 years and is a regular visitor to the region. Before joining the BBC’s team of presenters in 1999, Lyse spent 15 years as a BBC foreign correspondent with postings in Amman, Jerusalem, Tehran, Islamabad, Kabul and Abidjan.

Lyse was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Honours list in 2014 for her services to broadcasting.  She is an honorary patron of Canadian Crossroads International, and a member of Friends of Aschiana UK which supports working street children in Afghanistan.

David Hickman is a Senior Lecturer with the University of York’s Department of Theatre, Film and Television. He has been writing, producing and directing single documentaries and series for broadcast television in the UK and internationally for the last 20 years.  David is also a cinematographer, having worked on 16 and 35mm film, as well as a variety of video and HD formats – shooting drama and non-fiction. His latest project is the documentary, Tales from Two Cities, which will be filmed in the world’s largest megaslums, Orangi Town in Karachi and Neza-Chalco-Itza in Mexico City.  Orangi in particular is a refugee town having had two waves of refugees settle there - Biharis from the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war and Afghans from the Soviet invasion and the fallout from 9/11. 

David has won many awards for his work. As producer of the Errol Morris-directed A Brief History of Time (Triton/Paramount Pictures), he won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992, and the film (released theatrically worldwide) was judged one the ‘ten best movies’ of the year by, among others, Time Magazine and the Los Angeles Times.  More recently he directed and series produced the Emmy Award-winning The Elegant Universe, adapted from Brian Greene’s bestselling book for Nova/WGBH in the USA and Channel 4.  Since joining the University of York in 2009, David has completed Race and Intelligence: Science’s Last Taboo, a feature-length documentary for Channel 4, which won the prestigious Grierson Award in 2010 for best science documentary, and three films for the Al Jazeera series Slavery: A 21^st Century Evil (2011), which have been nominated for an IDA (International Documentary Association).  He produced, directed and photographed both productions.

Alan Travis is the Guardian's home affairs editor. He is the author of Bound and Gagged, a history of British obscenity.

Dr Charlotte O’Brien is a Senior Lecturer at York Law School, University of York. Charlotte is the Principal Investigator on the EU Rights Project. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the project is looking at how easy it is to use the rights granted by EU law in the UK, and is looking to better develop a theory of EU citizenship and social and administrative justice in EU law.  She has volunteered and worked in Citizens Advice Bureaux for over 13 years, and specialised in EU legal research for 11 years. She is an 'analytical expert' on the EU Commission's Free Movement and Social Security Coordination network, producing reports and giving litigation advice and suggestions to the Commission.

Professor Sultan Barakat is the Founding Director of the Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit (PRDU), which was established at the University of York in 1993. He is internationally known for having pioneered both scholarship and practice in the field of post-war recovery. Among his principal achievements has been the shaping of a generation of academic and practitioner leaders, both in the UK and overseas, in the fields of post-conflict reconstruction, disaster management and recovery, humanitarian assistance, conflict management and foreign policy.

Sultan provides guidance as a Senior Adviser and Consultant to the United Nations, the World Bank, European Union, the Department for International Development (DFID), the International Labour Organization (ILO), International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the Dutch and Norwegian Ministries of Foreign Affairs, United States Institute of Peace, the Higher Education Funding Council for England and a variety of governments and international non-governmental organisations including CARE and Tiri. In 2005-2006, he led a seminal evaluation of the National Solidarity Programme in Afghanistan, one of the largest post-conflict reconstruction projects in recent history, for the World Bank and Afghan government. 

Supported by The Morrell Centre for Toleration which is generously funded by the C and J B Morrell Trust

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