I am an award-winning investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker with an extensive background in short and long-form storytelling. I have worked as a reporter, producer and director for international media outlets including the Guardian, Al Jazeera English, CNN International and Channel 4. My print and multimedia pieces have also featured in the Guardian Long Read, New York Times, the Observer Magazine and Observer on Sunday among others. My industry work has included narrative journalism, print/radio features, live news production, foreign/current affairs productions, multimedia investigative projects and long-form documentaries. Working in both print and broadcast media, my in-depth investigations often focus on human rights, corporate negligence, environmental crimes and criminal justice issues.
The investigative journalism work I have done for the Guardian and Al-Jazeera English has received numerous awards and nominations for its in-depth coverage of underreported issues on modern-day slavery and exploitation. The documentary “Children of the Cannabis Trade” for Al Jazeera's People and Power strand made public for the first time the criminalisation of child trafficking victims within the British justice system, while my written feature “A Slave in Scotland” for Guardian Weekend Magazine received numerous awards for exposing the legal and psychological realities migrant labour trafficking victims face in the UK. I recently reported, produced and directed The Trap, a year-long Guardian investigation about the targeting of incarcerated women out of US prisons and jails for the sex industry, which has impacted how US Homeland Security is training their anti-trafficking investigators. To date, The Trap has received the highest views of any Guardian documentary in its history, amassing over 29 million views and has been selected as among the top 200 pieces of journalism in the paper’s last 200 years in print. Most recently I published a two-year investigation, How Facebook and Meta Became Marketplaces for Child Sex Trafficking in the Guardian (April 2023), influencing the New Mexico Attorney General to launch a lawsuit against the social media giant, and resulting in further US states to follow social media safety lawsuits around child safety.
I hold a PhD in Trans-Disciplinary Documentary Film at the University of Edinburgh, an MA in Journalism from Goldsmiths, University of London, an MA in American Poetry and Prose from the University of Essex, and a BA in English from the University of California, Davis. I am also an Assistant Professor of Journalism and the MA Programme Director at the University of Galway. I have had commissions in five continents, and hold memberships and run mentorships with Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), the Society of Professional Journalists, the Freedom of Information Coalition, the Foreign Press Association and the ACLU. I am a current 2024 grantee of JournalismFund Europe, working with other journalists on a cross-border investigation between Ireland, France and Germany.
