Meet Our Team

Aiganysh Aidarbekova

Aiganysh is a Bellingcat researcher from Kyrgyzstan. She is particularly interested in corruption in Central Asia, conspiracies in Europe and tool development.

Anna Hristova

Anna is a Training & Administration Coordinator at Bellingcat.

Annique Mossou

Annique Mossou is a trainer and researcher for Bellingcat. She focuses on the world of conspiracies, mis- and disinformation.

Aric Toler

Aric Toler is the Director of Research & Training at Bellingcat. His research interests are focused on open source data in eastern Europe and Eurasia.

Carlos Gonzales

Carlos combines an engineering background with visual analysis to expose wrongdoing. He has collaborated with international journalism organizations with investigative outputs in Latin America and Africa. Carlos specializes in topics such as human rights violations, war crimes and child sexual exploitation.

Charlotte Godart

Charlotte Godart is an investigator, trainer and lead of the Global Authentication Project at Bellingcat. She specialises in mapping large datasets and building methodologies for open source collaboration. She is also a member of our Justice & Accountability unit.

Dessi Damianova

Dessi is Bellingcat’s Chief Operating Officer and is responsible for organisational development, fundraising and finance. She brings more than 25 years of experience as a journalist, editor and C-suite executive in the non-profit media development sector. She previously set up large investigative journalism programs in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.

Eliot Higgins

Eliot is the Founder and Creative Director of Bellingcat, and Director of Bellingcat Production BV. He is the author of the book We Are Bellingcat, which details the story of Bellingcat and online open source investigation.

Eoghan Macguire

Eoghan is Lead Editor at Bellingcat. He previously worked at CNN, NBC News and Storyful.

Foeke Postma

Foeke is an investigator and trainer at Bellingcat. He has a background in conflict analysis and resolution and is particularly interested in military, environmental and human rights issues.

Giancarlo Fiorella

Giancarlo is a Senior Investigator and Education Lead at Bellingcat. He has a PhD in Criminology & Sociolegal Studies from the University of Toronto, where his research focused on anti-government protests in Venezuela.

Hannah Bagdasar

Hannah is the Lead Investigator for the Global Authentication Project and an investigator in Bellingcat’s Justice & Accountability Unit. Prior to working at Bellingcat Hannah was an analyst at a United Nations investigative mechanism. Hannah specialises in international criminal law, open source research and how these fields interact with gender.

Jaap de Bruijn

Jaap is Bellingcat’s Financial Manager and has worked for a variety of NGOs in The Netherlands, Africa and the Middle East.

Johanna Wild

Johanna Wild is an open source researcher with a particular interest in tool development for digital investigations. Her work also includes research on conspiracy ideologies.

Katja Michael

Katja coordinates several research and training projects at Bellingcat. She has a background in international media development and lecturing in journalism.

Logan Williams

Logan is the data science and visualisation lead for Bellingcat’s Investigative Tech team. He works across Bellingcat to obtain, organise and analyse data, develop new tools for open source investigations, and communicate complex information with data visualisation and cartography.

Lucy Swinnen

Lucy is an editor at Bellingcat with a background in investigative journalism. She previously worked at BBC World Service and First Draft News.

Mareike Vitt

Mareike is the lead fundraiser at Bellingcat. She has a background in international marketing, humanitarian aid and systemic organisational development.

Maxim Edwards

Maxim is an editor at Bellingcat. His work as a journalist has focused on central and eastern European politics, nationalism and migration. He previously worked at openDemocracy (oDR), OCCRP and GlobalVoices.

Michael Colborne

Michael is a journalist, investigator and trainer for Bellingcat. He leads Bellingcat’s work researching and monitoring the transnational far right.

Michael Sheldon

Michael Sheldon is a researcher for Bellingcat. He has a background in open source research and verification on the conflict in the Donbas. Prior to joining Bellingcat, Michael worked at the DFRLab.

Miguel Ramalho

Miguel is a data scientist at Bellingcat. His interests include online disinformation and polarisation, leveraging open source data to build tools and do visual analysis as well as free open source software.

Narine Khachatryan

Narine is a trainer and researcher at Bellingcat. She is particularly interested in tracking civilian harm caused by military conflicts, and researching environmental and human rights issues.

Nick Waters

Nick is the Justice & Accountability Lead for Bellingcat. His work focuses on the systematic application of open source investigation techniques to track conflicts and improve international accountability.

Olga Lubiv

Olga is a digital researcher and investigator with a background in law. Her work currently focuses on incidents of civilian harm that have followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ross Higgins

Ross is a researcher and trainer at Bellingcat. He has a particular interest in systems that enable financial crime, as well as online disinformation and conspiracy theories.

Tristan Lee

Tristan is a data scientist for Bellingcat with a background in computational physics. He is particularly interested in right-wing extremist networks.

Youri van der Weide

Youri is an open source researcher and trainer for Bellingcat. He has worked on a wide variety of topics, including human rights abuses in Africa, migration in the Eastern Mediterranean, arms exports by EU countries and research into new open source tools and methods.