Advisory Board
The Advisory Board is chaired by Professor Richard Thomas. It has run successfully since October 2022, and meets 3 times a year. The Board comprises of former students and industry professionals who remain fully committed to the wellbeing and sustainability of the programme, despite having graduated and moved onto a variety of roles associated with journalism. Members have experience as both students on the programme, but also as practitioners, editors, creators, entrepreneurs, managers, educators and researchers. Board’s objective is to provide ideas, suggestions and recommendations to the Mundus Journalism consortium regarding what is taught, how it is taught and why, ensuring that industry trends, issues and the zeitgeist themes within the profession are being factored in. The perspectives offered by the Board are global and diverse, ensuring that all regions, and all types and approaches to journalism have a voice within the development of the programme and the alumni communities it develops.
To further strengthen the Board, we are in autumn 2025 adding five new members — alumni who have graduated from our newest specialisations at Charles University and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, as well as more recent graduates from across the programme. This expansion will help us maintain strong connections with alumni who have more recently studied in the programme and entered the job market, ensuring that their fresh insights and experiences continue to inform our ongoing development.
Here are our distinguished Advisory Board members:
Richard Thomas
Professor Richard Thomas, Head of the Advisory Board, is a Professor in Journalism and is Head of Media Communications at Swansea University in Wales, UK. He is a former Prorgamme Director of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Journalism Degree (War and Conflict specialism). He has published many scholarly and non-scholarly books and articles on a range of issues including politics, elections, conflict, digital journalism and sport.
Brindusa Nastasa
Brindusa I. Nastasa is a Romanian filmmaker, award-winning multimedia-journalist, storytelling trainer and video specialist based in Rotterdam. She is the co-founder of Springroll Media – a collective of female media professionals helping organisations and NGOs in their social impact mission. She has worked with: Humanity in Action, UN WOMEN, UNOCT, European Schoolnet, Africa Europe Foundation Women’s Leaders Network, Council of Europe, Goethe Foundation, AWID, etc. Her work has been published by De Correspondent, Der Spiegel, CGTN, CCTV, TV Brasil, ZDF, Initium Media, The Ferret. Brindusa graduated from the Erasmus Mundus Master’s in Journalism, Media and Globalisation in 2016. Since 2024, she is working as a Social Media Video Specialist for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
Thomas Seymat
Thomas Seymat is Head of Innovation and Digital for News at ARTE, the Franco-German public broadcaster, where he leads the newsroom’s data & AI strategy and supports cross-platform digital editorial development. Previously, he served as Editorial Projects & Development Manager at Euronews after starting his career as a digital journalist. A journalism educator and speaker, he is a former Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow and an alumnus of the Erasmus Mundus Journalism programme (2008–2010).
Dinfin Mulupi
Dinfin Mulupi is a Journalism Studies Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA. She holds the joint Erasmus Mundus M.A. in Journalism and Media and Globalization from City, University of London and Aarhus University in Denmark (2018). Prior to completing the Mundus programme, Dinfin worked as a business journalist for six years, covering the East African region. Dinfin’s research interests focus on the intersection between media, race and gender equity, particularly the representation of women and ethnic minorities in newsrooms and news content, and the use of social networking platforms for feminist and racial justice activism.
Dánae Vílchez
Dánae Vílchez is a Nicaraguan journalist living in exile and the Latin America researcher at the Committee to Protect Journalists. She documents press freedom violations across the region, with a focus on surveillance, judicial harassment, digital attacks, and the risks facing journalists in forced displacement. Her reporting has appeared in openDemocracy, Confidencial, The Washington Post, and Pikara Magazine. Her work explores human rights, democratic backsliding, press freedom, and the impact of exile on journalists and human rights defenders. She holds an Erasmus Mundus Master’s in Journalism, Media and Globalisation (2018–2020), completed at Aarhus University and the University of Amsterdam.
Marcelo Elizardo
Marcelo Elizardo is a Brazilian journalist and Erasmus Mundus alumnus - from the Amsterdam cohort (2019-2021). He started his career in Rio de Janeiro at TV Globo, the biggest broadcaster in Latin America. During this period, he covered subjects such as politics, human rights and international relations. After Mundus, he decided to stay in Amsterdam. Currently, Marcelo is Head of News at Vylo - a news social media start-up -, as well as an International Correspondent at Globo in The Netherlands.
John Ainger
John Ainger is a British climate reporter for Bloomberg News based in Brussels. He was part of the 2014-16 Mundus batch, specialising in politics at the University of Amsterdam, where he wrote his thesis on the power of visual and written framing in reporting of terror. The day of his final assessment also happened to be the day Britain voted to leave the EU, making it memorable to say the least!
Louisa Esther (Diagana)
Louisa Esther is a PhD candidate at University College Cork (Ireland), where she works on contemporary exile journalism in/ from the Global South. A short 3-minute introduction to her project is available here, and you can find her academic publications touching upon conflict and war journalism, press freedom issues, qualitative and decolonial journalism studies, and cultural/ exile studies on her ORCID profile. Louisa graduated in 2020 from Mundus Journalism with a specialisation in Conflict and War Reporting (Swansea University, Wales). Previously, she completed two Bachelor's degrees at Leipzig University (Germany) in Political Science (2017) and African Studies (2018) and gained experience as a researcher, freelance journalist, and communications specialist in Africa’s Great Lakes region and across Europe (full portfolio on louisaesther.com).
Idris Akinbajo
Idris Akinbajo is a Nigerian investigative journalist and the current Managing Editor of Premium Times, a Nigerian investigative online newspaper. Idris is a multiple award-winning journalist and was twice named Nigeria's investigative journalist of the year. He completed his Erasmus Mundus Masters in 2016 and did his second year of study at in Amsterdam. Apart from his work as a journalist, Idris likes reading novels and playing/watching football.
Jonathan Paterson
Jonathan Paterson is Managing Editor of The News Movement, a start up pressing the reset button on journalism. Previously Head of Video at BBC News, Jonathan’s 20+ year career include production roles at the flagship Newsnight programme, and international postings to New York and Washington. He is a visiting lecturer in Digital Storytelling at City University in London.
Brandon Oelofse
Brandon Oelofse is Co-Founder of Media Development Collective, a collaborative consultancy and training organisation focused on the media, civil society, and for-good sectors. MDC has a focus on Media for Influence and Advocacy, Media for Behaviour Change and Media to Counter Radicalisation and Disinformation. Brandon has experience in leading teams of content developers, trainers and curriculum specialists in building digital communities for social change programme roadmaps, social change campaigns and implementing media for development projects globally for NGOs in the Netherlands.
Experience includes working in media and development sectors as an award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker with work represented at numerous festivals, including Cannes and the Oscars. Writer and Director of television series, commercials, short films, documentaries and new media content. Co-founder of Vuselela Media, a Southern African non-profit youth development agency with a decade of experience in promoting social activism and behavioural change through advocacy, education and awareness campaigns.
Yohanna Pinheiro
Yohanna Pinheiro is a Senior Reporter at Argus Media, specializing in LPG and ammonia freight markets. She provides in-depth analysis of global shipping dynamics, focusing on freight rates, trade flows, and regulatory impacts. Prior to joining Argus, Yohanna had taken significant roles at Brazilian media covering energy, infrastructure, and business sectors. She holds an Erasmus Mundus Journalism MA from 2021–2023, with specialisation in Business and Innovation.
Joshua Coe
Joshua Coe is an American multimedia journalist and 2022-2024 graduate of the Erasmus Mundus Journalism Master’s Programme. Currently, he works as a correspondent and producer for “The World,” the longest-running daily global news program on US public radio. He covers a range of topics from Russia’s hybrid warfare in the Baltic to freedom of speech issues on university campuses in Hungary. His previous journalism experience includes The GroundTruth Project, an award-winning journalism nonprofit with resilience-building media initiatives like Report for America and Report for the World.
Shekufe Ranjbar
Shekufe Ranjbar is an Iranian multimedia journalist and media researcher based in Munich. She holds a Master’s in English Literature from the University of Tehran and a joint Master’s degree in Journalism from Aarhus University and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU). Her research explores journalism in restrictive contexts and media in exile. With over a decade of experience, she has reported for and collaborated with international news outlets, diplomatic missions and the corporate sector. She has also led journalism workshops in Germany and for global online audiences. Shekufe previously worked as Communications and Marketing Assistant for the Erasmus Mundus Journalism Programme. Building upon that experience, she has started a position as a social media editor in Munich.
Ida Dreiager
Ida Sejersdal Dreiager is currently working as a journalist and frontpage editor with the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten. Her expertise is especially in breaking news coverage, digital journalism and optimising stories to achieve more readership and engagement. She graduated from the Erasmus Mundus Journalism programme in 2024 after completing the Cultures & Contexts specialisation at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich.
Ronald Rodrigues
Ronald Rodrigues works as a multimedia editor at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) across broadcasting services focused on Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan. Alongside, he works as an independent journalist based in Central Europe investigating human rights violations, racial discrimination, injustice, migration, environment, and LGBTQIA+ rights mainly focusing on minorities, migrants, and marginalised communities from the Global South. He holds an Erasmus Mundus Journalism MA from 2021–2023, with the specialisation in Totalitarianism &
Transition from Charles University, Czech Republic.