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Ksenia Les portrait

Team

Sébastien VANNIER

Sébastien Vannier is a journalist who has been working as a German correspondent for the French media since 2007, including for the daily newspaper Ouest-France. He has published Les Allemands décomplexés (2015) and Berlin, Laboratoire d’innovations (2016). Sébastien is president of the Babel Germany association and, together with the Berlin team, was in charge of conception and fundraising for the projects Balkans&Beyond and BEYOND 91.

Prune ANTOINE

Prune Antoine is an award-winning French reporter, editor-in-chief and writer, based in Berlin. She has spent the last decade reporting across Europe, depicting the aftermaths of post-Soviet space, the contradictions of Germany and women’s issues from the Balkans to the Caucasus for l’Obs, Médiapart, Grazia and GEO. Co-founder of the project Sisters of Europe, she also writes for ARTE Karambolage and is the author of two books, La Fille & Le Moudjahidine (2015) and l’Heure d’été (2019).

Alex KING

Alex King is a British journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Athens who focuses on activism, human rights and youth culture. He is currently editing a feature documentary on Indian bodybuilding called Tight and developing a long term project on oil extraction, environmental contamination and climate activism in Greek regions and around the Balkans.

Ksenia LES

Ksenia Les is a Russian documentary photographer and storyteller. Having moved to Germany, she has had the opportunity to see her former home and its people’s mentality from a different perspective. She mainly works on stories about socio-political issues in Eastern European countries. She also focuses on topics concerning identity transformation. Her work has been published in The Washington Post, NZZ, News Deeply, Taz, Spiegel online and others.

Marco PANZETTI

Marco Panzetti is a freelance documentary photographer, multimedia journalist and visual artist whose work focuses on contemporary issues related to social and environmental (in)justice, migration and urban development. He has carried out projects in Europe, Latin America and Asia, working independently, on assignment, and through art residencies.

His award-winning work has been published in leading media outlets and exhibited internationally. While photography remains at the core of his practice, he also works with different audiovisual formats to create short documentary films, immersive multimedia & VR pieces and art installations.

Maria Jou SOL

Maria Jou Sol studied Image and Sound in Barcelona and graduated in documentary photography. Using photography as a form of self-expression and a tool for social transformation, her projects always focus on people and the human condition. Maria Jou is concerned with photographing everyday life, inspired by the ‘moments’ that can be captured amidst oblivion.

Jamie MACKAY

Jamie Mackay is a UK-born freelance writer, journalist and translator based in Florence. He has worked across Europe as an editor at several political and cultural magazines including openDemocracy, Precarious Europe and Krytyka Polityczna where he is currently an Italian correspondent. He is a regular contributor to The Guardian, the London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement and Frieze where he writes about art, literature and migration. His book The Invention of Sicily is forthcoming with Verso Books (2020).

Angelos CHRISTOFILOPOULOS

Angelos Christofilopoulos was born in Duesseldorf in 1970 and moved to Athens at the age of 25. He studied photography at the FOCUS School of Photography in Athens and has been working since 2000 as a freelance photographer for Greek print media. In 2010, he joined the Athens based Photo Agency FOSPHOTOS and later co-founded the first English-language non-profit news outlet in Greece, “AthensLive”.

Kajuju MURORI

Kajuju Murori is a Kenyan freelance writer, based in North Cyprus. Drawn to storytelling at an early age, she loves to write about culture, travel, start-ups and women. Her stories have been featured in The Culture Trip, The African Exponent, The Exchange, She Leads Africa, African Green Magazine and many other media outlets. In 2016 she worked as a guest blogger for the Kampala International Theatre Festival in Uganda.

Alexander Damiano RICCI

Alexander Damiano Ricci is editor of the Italian version of cafebabel.com. He also works for the Brussels based podcast production agency, Bulle Media, and is a regular contributor to the European Data Journalism Network and VoxEurop. His articles have been published in Corriere della Sera – L’Economia, La Repubblica, Internazionale, Left, Poynter, Linkiesta, openDemocracy and other Italian and international outlets. Alexander was born in Germany and grew up in Italy. He has lived and worked in Rome, Milan, Paris, Brussels and Turin. He is currently based in Rome.

Eva HOFFMANN

Eva Hoffmann strives to work outside her comfort zone, questioning power structures, portraying people at the margins of society and following the political movements of our times. After studying media sciences and anthropology, she now prefers to work on long story formats for German newspapers and magazines such as fluter, DUMMY Magazin and Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Johan GIRAUD

Johan Giraud is a graphic designer and web developer who has worked across Europe including in Helsinki, Amsterdam, Brussels, Munich and Paris. He has finally settled his butt and bike down in Brussels (for now). He mainly focuses on brand identity, article visuals, illustrations and front-end development, but print and web design are not his end goal. One day we might find Johan in the mountains tending a garden.

Anne ACKERMANN

Anne Ackermann is a documentary photographer and photojournalist based in Germany but working worldwide. She focuses on women’s issues across broad topics like migration and its aftermath, skin bleaching and plastic surgery, environmental disasters and child marriages. She is a grantee of VG Bildkunst Germany and Photoreporter Festival France, a finalist at the International Women Photographers Award Hansel Mieth Preis, and The Jacob Riis Award, and a member of the photo agencies FOCUS and Women Photograph. Her images have been exhibited worldwide, at the New York Photo Festival, Gulf Photo Plus, PhotoGrafia Festival Rome, Angkor Photo Festival, Alliance Francaise Dubai and many others.

Audrey LEBEL

Audrey Lebel is a French journalist and member of the collective ‘Les Journalopes’. Her stories focus on women’s issues in the former Soviet bloc, such as illegal abortions in Poland, domestic violence in Russia and female soldiers in Ukraine – a country she loves and where she lived for a year following the Maidan revolution. Interested in societal, political and environmental issues, seen through a feminist lens, she contributes regularly to Le Monde diplomatique, TOPO, La Revue Dessinée, The Amnesty International Chronicle, Marie Claire, Causette and others.

Stefano LIPIELLO

Stefano Lipiello is an Italian journalist and translator based in Berlin. He writes for the newspaper Il Manifesto and has been supporting Cafébabel Berlin for several years. He had his first serious journalistic training behind the desk of China-Files in Beijing. Stefano has also hosted his own radio show on travel and people who travel, called 181° Parallelo.

Cecilia BUTINI

Cecilia Butini is an Italian freelance journalist currently based in Berlin. She has covered migration issues, human rights, politics and the environment for a variety of English-language publications including Foreign Policy, Coda Story, The Guardian and Euronews. She has also worked for AFP and the Italian newspaper La Stampa, and has collaborated with PBS Frontline on a cross-border documentary production.

She is passionate about showing the human angle of news stories and is a strong believer in the power of multimedia storytelling to better connect with audiences. She is an alumna of Columbia Journalism School in New York.

Francesco BARBATI

Francesco Barbati is an aspiring content writer based in Berlin. He has experience in news writing, blogging and translation, both in English and Italian. His passion lies especially but not only in addressing social, political and cultural issues. He has a background in foreign language and translation studies as well as in communication studies. He has lived, worked and studied in different European countries, while being active in co-organising public events and as a student representative and tutor. Francesco joined the Cafébabel Berlin team in the first part of 2019.

Léa MARCHAL

Léa Marchal is web editor of the French version of cafebabel.com. She is also a board member of the Cafébabel local team in Brussels. She has worked with other EU related media such as Contexte, l’Europe c’est pas sorcier, and Eurojournalist. Léa has studied in Montbéliard, Strasbourg and Gießen. She has lived in Germany and the UK, both for both studies and work, and is now based in Brussels.

Christiane LÖTSCH

Christiane Lötsch likes to work with a mission. Throughout her professional path at the Academy of Arts, Kulturstiftung des Bundes and A Soul for Europe she has worked as a project manager for Arts, Culture, Civil Society, politics and Europe. She has been a committed Babelian since 2008 and General Secretary of the Babel Germany association since 2016.

Benjamin WOLF

Benjamin Wolf has studied journalism, history and international affairs. After stints with cafebabel.com in Paris and ARTE in Strasbourg, he is now working as managing editor and COO for Metropole magazine in Vienna. His fields of expertise are politics, economics, culture, and history.

Veronica MONTI

Veronica Monti is a longtime translator for cafebabel.com. She was born and raised in Milan but has spent much of her adult life abroad. After her Bachelor and Master studies in philosophy and one year Erasmus in Germany, she worked a number of jobs in four different continents, while learning new languages and becoming a polyglot.

Christian CAPONE

Christian Capone is a freelance translator who regularly contributes to cafebabel.com, translating articles into Italian and German. Christian grew up in the Italian Alps and moved to Austria in late 2018 after graduating from the University of Trento, where he completed his studies in linguistics.

Irina BRÜNING

Irina Brüning attended school in Potsdam and Turin and studied Romance and Indo-European studies in Jena and Lyon. She has been working as a freelance translator from French and Italian into German since 2011. Previously she has been a volunteer translator for cafebabel.com and has written some literary reviews in German for queer.de and TraLaLit. Irina lives in Hamburg.

Jaleh OJAN

Jaleh Ojan is a freelance writer, poet and critic. They are a frequent contributor to Fixpoetry, and their articles have been published in some of Germany’s leading online arts and culture magazines, such as Kultura Extra and TITEL kulturmagazin.

Hélène PILLON

Hélène Pillon is a nomadic journalist who has recently moved to Marseille in order to work on audiovisual projects with young people and prisoners. For the last 5 years, she has been collaborating with Cafébabel and various British and French magazines. She is currently developing a web-radio in the northern districts of Marseille.

Daniel SCHWAHN

Daniel Schwahn is currently finishing his Master’s degree in modern literature and working as a translator and interpreter. Over the past few years he has published and translated various articles for cafebabel.com. He has also worked in the field of cultural institutions and promotion as well as in publishing, which brought him to Munich, Frankfurt, Turin, Trieste, Nice and Venice, where he is currently based.

Irene DOMINIONI

Irene Dominioni is a journalist from Milan. She has lived in the United States, Denmark and The Netherlands and collaborated with a number of Italian and international outlets, among them Linkiesta, Euronews, and BusinessPeople. She has covered a wide range of topics, from politics to social issues, education, innovation, and the environment.

Taghi BIDGELI

Taghi Bidgeli is a Belgian audiovisual translator, subtitler and copywriter. He regularly works for television channels such as ARTE France, AtresMedia and DMAX, mostly on documentaries, films and TV series. Taghi studied both in Brussels and Salamanca, and now lives in Madrid.

Hannah ARMBRUST

Hannah Armbrust is a poet and leather artisan, originally from Ohio (USA). Her work has appeared in Postroad, Shadowgraph, and Sehnsucht. Currently, she lives and works with her husband in Orvieto, Italy.

Christophe DENNAUD

Christophe Dennaud has studied English and Italian in Toulouse, his home town, and Bordeaux, where he lives now. He has travelled in several countries in Europe including the United Kingdom, Spain, Switzerland and Italy, and is passionate about the ‘old continent’ and its variety of people and cultures.

Courtney ANDERSON

Courtney Anderson is a freelance writer and English teacher in southern France. As an avid Sudoku player, she is continually trying to beat her fastest time. She has contributed to The Local, cafebabel.com and Are We Europe. She was also the education, agriculture, and health reporter for The Herald and News in Oregon, U.S., and a news editor at the Montana Kaimin.

Zoé LOCHER

Zoé Locher works as a freelance translator and voiceover actor. During her free time, she writes for magazines and other media. She obtained a degree in philosophy in Nantes and then moved to Berlin. After four great years there, and with a German master’s degree in her pocket, she decided to settle in the city of Brussels.

Tullio FILIPPONE

Tullio Filippone is an Italian journalist based in Palermo. He works as a freelancer for the regional edition of La Repubblica, the press agency AFP and the weekly Il Venerdì. He founded the association Cafébabel Palermo and works as a press officer for cultural events.

Jessica DEVERGNIES-WASTRAETE

Jessica Devergnies-Wastraete has been translating into French for Cafébabel since 2008. After studying and working in Brussels, she spent time in Reykjavík, Stockholm and Paris to volunteer, study and undertake internships. Her passion for languages then took her back to Iceland where she’s been living for the past five years.

Amélie TAGU

Amélie Tagu studies European politics in Brussels. After completing her journalism degree in Lannion (France), she left for a year to Czech Republic, through a European volunteering scheme, to facilitate a media workshop with teenagers. She joined the Cafébabel team as Junior editor in February 2019.