Having begun his career with the Arab news organisation analysing African affairs, he took on the director general role in 2006 and was to steer Al Jazeera as it responded to the tumultuous events that began sweeping across the Arab world in January 2011. Commentators compared the Arab Spring for Al Jazeera to CNN’s coming of age during the early days of the Gulf War in 1991.

With an increasing global presence,  Al Jazeera, which is based in the Qatari capital Doha and previously partially owned by the state’s Emir, has also been criticised for pulling its punches over the uprising in the Gulf state of Bahrain and for its lack of coverage on events in Qatar itself. With limited access in the United States, it has also been criticised for biased reporting and for being anti-American and pro-Islamic.

Wadah Khanfar will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow to discuss the rise of Al Jazeera, the role he played in its development and where the news organisation can go from here.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of that day we will be joined by a panel of Egyptians to discuss their hopes for revolution in Egypt a year later.

Since 11 February, when Hosni Mubarak finally stepped down, Egypt has been governed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. In this time there have been a growing number of military trials, new anti-protest laws and protesters have been detained. In response, protests have continued in Tahrir Square.

With elections underway, we will be discussing how the future looks for the Egyptian people and the challenges that lie ahead.

Chaired by Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor at the Observer. He has reported extensively from conflict zones including Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East, and has written widely on human rights issues and the impact of conflict on civilians. The winner of the George Orwell Prize for his reports from Iraq he is the author of The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern Conflict.

With:

Hossam Abdalla, a leading Fertility Consultant and a political activist, he was one of the leaders of the student movement in the 70’s in Egypt. He is also father of actor, producer and activist Khalid Abdalla.

Ahdaf Soueif, Egyptian author, political and cultural commentator. Her most recent book is entitled Cairo: My City, Our Revolution;

Tarek Osman, Egyptian writer and author of Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak.

Abdel Latif El Menawy, author and journalist. As head of the news at the Egyptian Radio and Television Union he oversaw all news content, founded Radio Misr, and pioneered documentary broadcasts. Author of Tahrir: The Last 18 Days of Mubarak.

The Frontline Club, in association with the BBC College of Journalism,  will be bringing together a panel of freelancers who will discuss the practicalities of life as a freelance foreign correspondent from setting up in a country to finding and pitching stories and dealing with the realities of conflict.

In contrast to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the recent fighting in Libya was not subjec to embedding restrictions and freelances were able to descend on the country and compete to get to the frontline.  Join us to discuss the issues working in a war zone raise for freelances.

Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.

With:

Tom Finn, a freelance journalist currently based in Sana’a, Yemen. He moved to Sana’a in August 2010 to work as an editor at the Yemen Times. He has been covering Yemen’s Arab uprising since January writing mainly for The Guardian but also for TIME, Foreign Policy Magazine, The Economist and Christian Science Monitor. In May his blog was selected by Foreign Policy Magazine as “recommended reading” for Barack Obama about the Persian Gulf. He is Al-Jazeera English’s correspondent in Yemen. He also blogs on Yemen for the Frontline Club. Twitter: @TomFinn2

Portia Walker, a freelance journalist who spent the past year covering the Arab Spring. After three years working for Al Jazeera English in London, she moved to Yemen, where she was the stringer for the Economist, the Washington Post, and briefly the Daily and Sunday Telegraph. After being deported from Yemen in March while reporting on the increasingly violent crackdown on anti-government demonstrators, she went to Libya where she covered the war and its aftermath for the Washington Post, the Independent, USA Today and Foreign Policy, among others. Twitter: @portia_walker

James Longman, freelance journalist working as an online producer between Sky News and CNBC. After having spent the past four or five years traveling, working and studying in the Middle East, he headed to Syria to spend time with opposition groups involved in the country’s uprising. Between June-July and September-October 2011, he spent time in hiding with groups in Zabadani, Homs, Rastan, Qabon, Madaya and Damascus where he wrote for the Times and the Telegraph and set up interviews for Sky News, NPR and PBS. Twitter: @JamesReport

Ruth Sherlock, a freelance journalist who has spent the year chasing the Arab Spring. She moved to the Middle East in 2009, living and working in Israel and the West Bank. On 23 January she packed her bag for a three day trip to see the protests in Cairo, and didn’t come back for six months. Writing primarily for the Daily Telegraph she covered the Egyptian revolution, then the Libyan civil war, and now focuses on the escalating conflict in Syria. Other outlets include Foreign Policy, Sunday Times, The LA Times, The Scotsman, and Al Jazeera English (web).

As revelations from the phone hacking investigation continue, join us for the first event of 2012 to discuss what has been revealed about the workings of the tabloid press and what the fall out will be for the journalism industry.

A lively public meeting hosted by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.

With:

Tom Latchem, freelance journalist, writer, broadcaster and former TV editor for News of the World. Twitter: @theboylatch

Anne Diamond, a journalist who for the past 25 years has been working in daily TV, radio and national newspapers. She is a regular panelist for The Wright Stuff on Channel 5 and a regular columnist for the Daily Mail. She hosts The Anne Diamond Show daily on BBC Radio Berkshire. She gave evidence at the Leveson inquiry on Monday 28 November.

Peter Wilby, who writes a weekly column for the New Statesman, the magazine he edited between 1998 and 2005. A former education correspondent for both the New Statesman and the Sunday Times, he was editor of the Independent on Sunday from 1995 to 1996.

Ben Fenton, chief media correspondent at the Financial Times. Twitter: @benfenton

George Brock, Professor and head of journalism at City University. A journalist at The Observer from 1976 to 1981 he moved to The Times in 1981 and held positions from foreign correspondent to managing editor before leaving in 2009. He is a board member of the World Editors Forum, and a member of the British committee of the International Press Institute. Twitter: @georgeprof

IN ASSOCIATION WITH BBC ARABIC

With leaders toppled in Tunisia and Egypt, continuing uprisings in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain, the Arab world has seen tumultuous change in recent months. Where does all this upheaval leave Israel? We will be focusing on the response of Israel to the revolutions sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa.

With a panel of Israeli experts and journalists we will explore how Israel and its people view the demands for democracy which are ousting friends in the region such as President Hosni Mubarak.

What happens to the peace process now? We will be discussing Israel’s position on Gaza and the West Bank in the light of changes taking place in the Arab world and of recent events.

Chaired by Samir Farah, one of BBC Arabic’s leading presenters and interviewers. He is the lead presenter of Nuqtat Hewar, BBC Arabic television’s flagship interactive programme and one of the most important interactive programmes in Arabic media. He has led a pioneering series of live interactive interviews with leading personalities across the Arab world, putting politicians and decision-makers directly before a live audience to answer questions and defend their policies. He is also the Deputy Head of Programmes for BBC Arabic TV. Twitter: @Samir_Farah

With:

Ambassador Yitzhak Lior joined Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1964. In 1967 he was a member of Israel’s Delegation to the Middle-East Peace Conference in Geneva. From 1968 – 81 he did four tours of duty in the U.S: Chicago, New York, Houston and Washington. In Beirut from 1982 – 84 he was head of Israel’s mission to Lebanon  (peace negotiations). In 1987 he was appointed deputy director general of the Foreign Ministry for Middle East Affairs. He served as the ambassador to the UN in Geneva from 1990 – 95 and the ambassador to Tokyo from 2000 – 04.

Daphna Baram worked in Jerusalem as a human rights lawyer, and later as a reporter, news editor and deputy editor in chief of the Jerusalem Based weekly Kol Hair. During fellowships with the Reuters Foundation and a period as a senior associate member at St Antony College, Oxford, she had written her book Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel (published 2004). Her articles on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were published by the Guardian, the Independent and the New Statesman, among others. She provided commentary for Al Jazeera, the BBC and other news outlets. She works for GRNlive in London as an editor. Twitter: @DaphnaBaram

Eldad Beck, the Berlin-based Europe Correspondent for Israel’s most widely circulated newspaper Yedioth Ahronot.  He is a former foreign affairs editor for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.  He has also worked as a Vienna based Correspondent for Israel’s Maariv newspaper.  He has served as a Paris-based Correspondent for Israel’s Channel 2 Television station, The Jerusalem Post, Globes; Hadashot and The Jerusalem Report. In Paris, he worked as the Editor and Moderator at Radio Shalom and a Journalist at „L´Arche“. Beck studied at the Sorbonne University, majoring in Arabic and Islamic studies.  During the Oslo process, he served as a correspondent for Arabic affairs on Gali-Zahl Radio Station in Israel. Most recently, Beck has published a book entitled Behind the Border documenting his visits to places such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Miri Weingarten, a Jewish Israeli, has worked for Israeli human rights group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel) since 1999. Based in London since 2009, she currently conducts advocacy/lobby for a coalition of three Israel-based human rights groups - PHR-Israel, Adalah and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, in the EU (Brussels) and the UN (Geneva). She also directs a British media initiative called JNews, which aims to provide alternative Jewish perspectives on Israel and Palestine to British media and the public.

The VII photographer has revisited the UK’s gangland to complete his recent three-year project The Family looking at a younger, more chaotic generation and the decaying empire of the British mob. By providing an intimate window on their criminal lives, Bain Hogg gives a rich picture of the UK’s crime scene and the new characters who orchestrate it.

Jocelyn Bain Hogg started his photography career as a unit photographer on film sets after studying Documentary Photography at Newport Art College. He shot publicity for the BBC and photographed fashion before moving into documentary projects and editorial assignments. His work has been included in numerous publications, including Vogue, Vanity Fair, the Sunday Times, The Independent, The Observer, GQ and Le Monde. He is a member of the VII photo agency.

He will be in conversation with journalist and documentary filmmaker Sean Langan.

The Family is available to pre-order from the Foto8 website.

From the popular uprisings in the Middle East, to the intervention in Libya, and now the tragedy unfolding in the Horn of Africa, many of this year’s top stories have been dominated by humanitarian issues.

In this end of year debate, leading figures from the humanitarian world gather to discuss the main challenges to protecting and assisting people caught up in conflict and disaster. They will also explore prospects for principled humanitarian action in 2012.

Chaired by Jonathan Rugman, Channel 4 News foreign affairs correspondent.

With:

Sara Pantuliano, head of the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute;

Dennis McNamara,  senior humanitarian adviser at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue;

Leslie E Norton, the director general of the Canadian International Development Agency’s International Humanitarian Assistance Directorate;

Manuel Aranda da Silva, director of Policy, Planning and Strategy, World Food Programme.

We will be examining the prospects of the DRC which has suffered so much violence and where rape is used as a weapon by rebel forces fighting for control of valuable mineral resources such as Tin, Tantalum and Tungsten that are used in everyday electronics such as mobile phones.

Recent election reforms mean that candidates can now win with only 15 - 20 per cent of the vote. Political speeches and broadcasts in the run-up to the election are using tactics that run along ethnic lines and violence has already broken out in some areas.

Can Vital Kamerhe the leader the Union pour la Nation Congolaise party (UNC) present a viable challenge to Kabila and if so, could he fulfill his pledges of freedom, justice and tolerance? What can be done to  address issues of corruption, abuse and extortion in the country?

Join us at the Frontline Club to debate the outcomes of the Presidential elections and to address the challenges that the people of a country with such vast resources face.

Chaired by Mary Harper, the Africa Editor at the BBC World Service. She has reported on Africa for the past twenty years, reporting from many conflict zones, including Sudan, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Algeria, and has done special investigations into Islamist extremism in Africa. She has written for several publications including The Economist, The Times and The Washington Post.

With:

Natznet Tesfay, head of Africa Forecasting at Exclusive Analysis Ltd. Prior to joining Exclusive Analysis she worked in the field of urban development, consulting for municipal governments in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.

Mike Davis, campaign leader of Global Witness’ Conflict Minerals campaign, that is calling on the DRC to demilitarise their mining sector and for electronic companies to clean up their supply chains.

Jean-Roger Kaseki, Human Rights campaigner in the UK and DRC and Labour councillor for Tollington Ward, Islington. He is originally from the Congo.

Fiona Lloyd-Davies, award winning flm maker, she has been making flms about human rights issues in areas of confict since 1992; working in Bosnia, Iraq, Pakistan and extensively in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

An opportunity to enjoy the company of the Club’s members and also a great night to introduce friends and colleagues who are interested in joining, so please bring a guest.

Complimentary drinks will be available courtesy of our generous sponsors, Chivas.  A set menu will be offered in the restaurant from 5.30-8pm or from 9pm, view the menu here. Space is limited so please indicate when booking if you would like to dine and at what time.

During the evening there will be a presentation of the Frontline Journalism Awards recognising excellence in journalism, which for the first time have been nominated by Frontline Club members. The Awards are sponsored by Canon. An auction will also be held in aid of the Fixers’ Fund.

The Frontline Club Award is given annually in recognition of an outstanding body of work or series of contributions over a one-year period. Work nominated for the Frontline Club Award should be for the period 1 October 2010 to 30 September 2011.

The Memorial Tribute Award is given in honour of front line journalists killed in the course of their work and can be awarded to recognise lifetime achievements or work that has not received the acclaim it deserves.

With India unwilling to acknowledge the demands of the people for freedom, and therefore avoiding debate on resolution, Kashmir’s future looks like it will remain in limbo for years to come. But with the recent Jan Lokpal protests and the Arab Spring, will India take note and give the people of Kashmir the right to self autonomy? Or will it continue to arm itself with Israeli weapons and training in the name of counter-terrorism? The Jan Lokpal protests were carried out in support of social activist Anna Hazare and his continuing pressure on the Indian government to push forward an anti corruption bill that would see the establishment and enforcement of legislation against endemic corruption.

Recently discovered unmarked graves of over 2000 bodies, of insurgents and local Kashmiris, have brought to the surface the horrific extent of the conflict that has left thousands of women widowed and subsequently abandoned by the Indian state with no knowledge of the fate of their husbands. An often forgotten and unreported conflict, in the name of diplomacy, Kashmir is slowly voicing itself onto the international agenda. But will Western powers support Kasmiri freedom, or will Indian diplomatic relations be put first?

Join us at the Frontline Club with an expert panel to discuss where Kashmir stands in its fight for freedom and the options that lay before it.

Chaired by Victoria Schofield, journalist and author of Kashmir in Conflict. She is an independent analyst and commentator on the Kashmir conflict for news agencies such as BBC World, Al Jazeera, CBS and CBC. She was also an independent rapporteur for the 4th Global Discourse on Kashmir that was sponsored by the International Council for Human Rights.

With:

Mirza Waheed, journalist and novelist. Born and brought up in Kashmir he joined the BBC’s Urdu Service in London in 2001. His first novel, The Collaborator, is set in his hometown during the early 1990s, and depicts the conflict between India and Pakistan and its effects on a border village in Kashmir.

Subhash Chopra, former The Times journalist and author of Partition, Jihad and Peace: South Asia after bin Laden.

Ashis Ray, Times of India journalist and former CNN South Asia Bureau chief and consultant editor.

Imran Khan, correspondent for Al Jazeera English. He has reported extensively from Pakistan, Afghanistan and from across the Middle East.

Lawrence Sáez, Senior Lecturer in Comparative and International Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) with expertise in Pakistan and India. Chair of the Centre for South Asian Studies.

Image Credit: Kashmir Global courtesy of Flickr

One of the most decorated journalists in the field, Alex Crawford, is the only person to be awarded three Royal Television Society journalist of the Year awards and has recently been presented the James Cameron Memorial Award 2011 for her coverage of the fighting in Libya and the Middle East.

Brought up in Nigeria and Zambia she began her journalistic career working on the Wokingham Times and later joined Sky News in 1989 where she has worked ever since, and is now their Special Correspondent.

She will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with former BBC executive Vin Ray to take a look back over her career as a foreign correspondent.

Photojournalist Jason Larkin chose these desert construction sites as the subject for his latest project, Cairo Divided. His two-year collaboration with journalist Jack Shenker has produced a long-form essay, accompanied by Larkin’s pictures, which has challenged traditional publication methods. Larkin will be speaking at the Frontline Club about photographing Cairo Divided and the means through which it was published.

Released just before the much-anticipated November elections in Egypt, the publication is a free paper supported by academic institutions, cultural centres, architectural organisations and Panos PICTURES. Its production is a novel attempt to bring long-form journalism and photojournalism to a wider audience.

The talk will be moderated by Max Houghton, Course Leader of the MA in Photojournalism at the University of Westminster and co-editor of 8 magazine. Larkin was one of Houghton’s first students at the University of Westminster and she takes a particular interest in photographic projects that combine images with the written word.

Jason Larkin is a British photojournalist who specialises in under-reported issues in the Middle East and Africa. He was recently awarded the Arnold Newman New Portraiture Award.

He will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with freelance journalist Tom Finn who is currently based in Sana’a, Yemen to reflect on his 40-year career, which has taken him to Eastern Europe, Washington correspondent and Kabul, Afghanistan throughout the Soviet period until 1992.

Twice winner of the International Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards, Jonathan Steele has, among others, also picked up the James Cameron award, the London Press Club’s Scoop of the Year award and Martha Gellhorn special award.

Join us to hear Jonathan Steele draw on his years of experience to talk about the craft of the foreign correspondent and discuss how the role has changed.

Steele will also be discussing his new book Ghosts of Afghanistan: Hard Truths and Foreign Myths.

With:

Will Anderson, double Bafta winner and producer/director of Keo Films and Channel 4’s Fish Fight

Quentin Clark, head of sustainability and ethical sourcing at Waitrose

Ian Campbell, OCEAN2012 UK co-ordinator working on the 2012 reform of the Common Fisheries Policy

Mike Kaiser, professor of ocean sciences at the University of Bangor

In this series they reveal official corruption in South Africa’s townships, capture the astonishing lifestyle of Nigeria’s ‘millionaire pastors’, follow Paralympians in Gaza hoping to get to London 2012 and in Uganda they profile a hospital offering pioneering surgery, saving babies from a deadly brain condition. This latest run of Unreported World will continue to deliver compelling investigate reports that reveal remarkable characters living extreme lives.

To mark the launch of the series, Channel 4 invite you to join Siobhan Sinnerton, Commissioning Editor for News & Current Affairs for an exclusive talk. With reporters Evan Williams, Seyi Rhodes, Jenny Kleeman, Oliver Steeds, Peter Oborne and Ramita Navai as they reveal the highlights, challenges and dangers of their extraordinary jobs.

Join us at the Frontline Club to debate the aims and objectives of the Occupy movement and to discuss whether it can bring about any change.

The tent cities springing up across the US, the UK, Australia and elsewhere have been compared to the scenes we saw earlier this year in Tahrir Square but is there a common bond?

Chaired by Kevin Marsh, Director of OffspinMedia and former Editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

With:

Harry Cole, a political journalist and media commentator. He set up Tory Bear in 2008 whilst studying at Edinburgh University. He is now News Editor of Order-Order.com and writes for The Daily Beast and Total Politics and The Commentator. Twitter: @MrHarryCole

Naomi Colvin, supporter of OccupyLSX.  She set up UK Friends of Bradley Manning, the UK support group for the accused Wikileaks whistleblower. Twitter: @auerfeld

Richard Murphy, a chartered accountant and economist. He is the author of The Courageous State: Rethinking Economics, Society and the Role of Government. Twitter: @RichardJMurphy

Aaron Peters, a PhD candidate at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is co-editor of Fight Back!, host of Resonance FM’s‘Novara’ and student activist. He is also on the National Committee of NCAFC, one of the organisations behind last years students walkouts and street actions. Twitter: @aaronjohnpeters

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief.

Daniel Ben-Ami, journalist and author, he has contributed to numerous national, specialist and international publications. He is author of Ferraris For All and Cowardly Capitalism.

The break-in was the beginning of a psychological war against the journalist and his family that burst into the open in 2011 when he was expelled from Moscow for reporting allegations that under Vladimir Putin the country had become a “virtual mafia state”.

The first western reporter to be deported from Russia since the days of the Cold War, Luke Harding has written about his run-in with the new Russia in his recently published book, Mafia State. It includes unpublished material from confidential US diplomatic cables, published by WikiLeaks last year, that described Russia as a “virtual mafia state”.

Luke Harding will be joined by a panel at the Frontline Club to discuss his experiences as The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent and what they tell us about Russia today.

Chaired by James Meek, writer and reporter. He has reported for the Guardian since 1985, between 1991 and 1999 from the former USSR. In 2004 his reporting from Iraq and about Guantanamo Bay won a number of awards, including Britain’s Foreign Reporter of the Year award. He is the author of two collections of short stories and four novels, most recently We Are Now Beginning Our Descent.

With:

Luke Harding, the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent. He was previously the Guardian’s South Asia correspondent in New Delhi, and has reported for the paper from Afghanistan and Iraq. Author of Mafia State: How one reporter became an enemy of the brutal new Russia and the co-author of WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s war on secrecy.

Angus Roxburgh, author and renowned journalist, he was the Sunday Times Moscow correspondent in the mid-1980s and the BBC’s Moscow correspondent during the Yeltsin years. He is the author of The Second Russian Revolution, Pravda: Inside the Soviet Press Machine and most recently The Strongman: Vladimir Putin and the Struggle for Russia.

Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist, co-founder of the secret services watchdog website Agentura.ru and co-author of The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB.

Susan Richards, a non-executive director and founder of Open Democracy and a specialist on Russian affairs. She is the author of two books; Epics of Everyday Life, about the lives of ordinary Russians in the transition from communism and Lost & Found in Russia: Encounters in the Deep Heartland, which covers the period 1992-2008.

At the press conference Julian Assange and Kristinn Hrafnsson of WikiLeaks will speak two separate matters:

1)    In relation to WikiLeaks Vs. U.S. banks 2)    A separate important announcement

If you would like to attend this event please email wikileaks.pressconference@mail.be to register. The Frontline Club will not be handling requests to attend.

Registration will be confirmed on a first come, first served basis. The maximum that will be allowed to register per organisation will be two people and a camera.

Please be aware that places are limited and registration is required. If you are unable to attend, but wish to send someone else from your organisation please contact us accordingly.

There will only be one live camera feed permissible at this event. If you are willing to be the pool for this feed please make this clear in your registration email. The first organization to offer this will be accepted, no other live feeds will be allowed.

The event will be live streamed at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/frontline-club

After the headlines trumpeting that Alex Crawford and Sky News were clear winners of the battle for reporting Tripoli, we will be taking stock of this recent chapter in covering modern warfare.

With a panel of newsroom executives and frontline journalists we will discuss how the conflict in Libya was reported and what its legacy is likely to be.

If the death of ITV News correspondent Terry Lloyd in Iraq in 2003 raised awareness about safety and risk in modern conflict, what can we learn from the reporting that took journalists right into the heart of the battle, the journalists who were held in the Rixos hotel and the competition between the channels? What are the pressures for both news executives and journalists in such circumstances?

Chaired by former BBC executive Vin Ray.

With:

Bill Neely, international editor for ITV News;

Sarah Whitehead, head of international news at Sky News;

Jon Williams, BBC’s world news editor.

Inigo Gilmore, award winning journalist and filmmaker who has worked across the world, with extensive experience in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. He won the Royal Television Society Award in 2011 for his work in Haiti last year, following earthquake.

One of the Gulf’s most talked about young artists, with no formal training, the sale established him as the highest selling in the country. He donated the proceeds to Edge of Arabia’s campaign to foster art education in the country where he still lives and works today.

Abdulnasser Gharem will be joining us at the Frontline Club to discuss the inspiration behind his work, which is now in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Saudi Arabian Ministry of Culture & Information. He will also reflect on how he reconciles being a soldier and an artist, shedding light on Saudi’s secretive society and culture.

Chaired by Henry Hemming, journalist, speaker and author of Together, Misadventure in the Middle East, In Search of the English Eccentric and Edge of Arabia.

“Every civilization is judged by its art. When we look back on what we have done artistically at this time we will see that there were some people raising their voices. I think that many years from now we will still be reading about Abdulnasser Gharem.”

- Hamza Serafi, Co-founder Athr Gallery

The ten years that followed took her through Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and beyond. Brooks’ images have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Time and Newsweek, and she has received a number of international awards.

Her new book, In the Light of Darkness, records the major conflicts in the Arab world in the past decade, from the mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan, to this year’s Arab Spring. The book includes essays she has written to accompany her photography, describing her experiences as a female photojournalist in the Muslim world.

Brooks will be speaking at the Frontline Club at an event moderated by Ramita Navai, reporter for Channel 4’s Unreported World.

With withdrawal the goal and a PR focus on portraying this as a clean exit, we will be looking at the reality of life in Afghanistan and how the events of the past 10 years have impacted the Afghan people.

Is it just another chapter in nearly half a century of conflict and instability? Is civil war avoidable? Is there any hope for the future and what might that  future look like?

Another opportunity to join in a lively public meeting, hosted by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House, bringing together experts and commentators and mixing their views with contributions from our audience.

With:

Horia Mosadiq, Afghanistan Researcher Amnesty International.

Dawood Azami, visiting scholar and award winning broadcast journalist working for the BBC World Service in London. Until recently, he was the BBC World Service Bureau Chief and Editor in Kabul, Afghanistan. Before joining the BBC in London in 1998 he worked as the head of an educational & training institute in Pakistan, mainly for Afghan refugees.  He was selected as a Young Global Leader (YGL) by the World Economic Forum in 2011. He won Global Reith Award for Outstanding Contribution, (the lifetime achievement award given by the BBC Global News Division in 2009). He also won the first Allama Tarzai Award (Father of journalism in Afghanistan), Kabul/London (2010).

Lucy Morgan Edwards, former political advisor to the EU Ambassador in Kabul with responsibility for civil military affairs, narcotics and security sector reform. She spent 7 years in the country working in a number of roles for the the UN and EU as well as reporting for the Economist and Daily Telegraph. She also spent many months in Jalalabad, Eastern Afghanistan, with a leading tribal family (that of Abdul Haq and Haji Abdul Qadir), which lead her to write The Afghan Solution: the inside story of Abdul Haq, the CIA and how western hubris lost Afghanistan.

Edward Girardet, journalist, writer and producer who has reported widely from humanitarian and conflict zones in Africa, Asia and elsewhere since the late 1970s. He first began covering Afghanistan several months prior to the Soviet invasion in 1979. Author of several books including The Essential Field Guide to Afghanistan and Killing the cranes: A Reporter’s journey through three decades of war in Afghanistan.

In May 1972 Robert King entered Angola prison, the state penitentiary of Louisiana after being convicted of an armed robbery he denied committing.

Along with Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox he was later convicted of murder in Angola prison; Wallace and Woodfox for the murder of Angola prison guard Brent Miller and King for the murder of fellow prisoner August Kelly.

Known as the Angola 3, the men have always proclaimed their innocence, saying that they were framed and targeted by the prison authorities for their activism as members of the Black Panther Party. Through their activities they successfully organised prisoners to improve conditions; reducing sexual assault, improving food quality and tackling racism - all condoned by prison security.

Between them King, Wallace and Woodfox have spent more than 100 years in solitary confinement in Angola’s maximum security Closed Cell Restricted (CCR) block in cells 2 x 3 metres for up to 23 hours a day.

All three were sentenced on insubstantial evidence and contradictory eye witness reports, they fought their convictions and in 2001 King was freed after 29 years in solitary.

In 2008, Woodfox’s conviction was overturned after a federal court ruled that his core constitutional rights had been violated at his original trial. But Louisiana attorney general Buddy Caldwell contested the decision and Woodfox, aged 64, was returned to Angola. Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox remain in solitary confinement, conditions which they are legally challenging as being a violation of the US Constitution prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.

Robert King will be talking about his mission to fight the cruelty of the prison-industrial complex challenge the systemic injustices involving class and racism that lead people to unjust incarceration and the human rights violations that prisoners must endure.

Accused of collaborating secretly with BBC Persian and illegally supplying content portraying Iran in a negative light, they have been condemned as “a group of terrorists, Bahais, communists and devil worshippers” by Iran’s Minister of Intelligence.

Iran insists that the filmmakers are part of the British Secret Service working under the guise of the BBC - allegations the BBC has denied.

In a statement released last week the BBC said that the filmmakers currently detained in Iran are independent documentary makers and BBC Persian television had bought the rights to broadcast their film. Iran and the BBC have had a tense relationship since the 2009 revolution, when Iran accused the BBC of fostering the unrest that followed the elections.

These latest arrests also raise concerns about what appears to be a wider crackdown: two leading Iranian filmmakers, Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof have been arrested and imprisoned in the past year.

Join us at the Frontline Club for this reactive briefing to discuss the detainment of the filmmakers, the battle for press freedom in Iran and the regime’s relationship with foreign media.

Chaired by Lindsey Hilsum International Editor for Channel 4 News.

With:

Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari who was detained in Iran during the 2009 uprising;

Drewery Dyke, Amnesty International’s Iran researcher;

Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, BBC Senior Correspondent and producer of The Ways of the Ayatollah;

Saeed Kamali Dehghan, award-winning Iranian journalist who writes for The Guardian. He was named 2010 Journalist of the Year at the Foreign Press Association Awards;

Picture Credit:

An image taken from award-winning Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film that documents his house arrest as he waits for a court verdict that, when it comes, could mean he will spend six years in jail and be banned from writing or filming for the next 20 years. The film was codirected by Mojtaba Mirtahmasb one of those who has been arrested. We will be screening the film in October.

Aid envoys have been restricted from reaching over 2.2 million refugees in the Al-Shabab controlled region of South-Central Somalia, and refugees have to brave fighting in conflict zones in Mogadishu in order to collect food provisions.

As land access is blocked, the UN is considering airlifts to distribute food and water to the refugees.

Aid agencies have been criticised for not acting sooner and making provisions for prevention, as the famine and drought in the Horn of Africa were deemed “predictable.” Does the international aid system need to step up its efforts and produce a more coordinated response? And what lessons can we learn for the future about prevention rather than cure?

Join us at the Frontline club with an expert panel to discuss the role of the international aid system, and what more can be done to bring relief to this war -torn and famine-stricken country.

Chaired by Mike Wooldridge, BBC World Affairs Correspondent.

With:

Abdi Garad, chairman of Central Committee of Somali National Party (Hanoolaato) a grass root based non clan, non regional and diverse political movement. He is actively involved in humanitarian work, through local Somali NGO, Markabley Development Trust and worked with the UNISOM mission in Somalia from 1993-95. He is currently in southern Somalia, working at a feeding famine victim  centres.

Jehangir Malik is the UK Director of Islamic Relief, an international aid and development NGO. It has a significant presence in East Africa and has been one of the few agencies to get into South Central Somalia.

Duncan McLean, operations manager at Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) based in the United States. He manages MSF programs in Nigeria, Uganda, Haiti, Ethiopia and Somalia.  His work at MSF has included Head of Mission in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Nepal, and Chad, and Field Coordinator in Sudan, Thailand, and Myanmar. In addition to his humanitarian field work he has lectured at a number of universities, including Charles University and the Anglo-American University in Prague, and worked as a journalist.

Ridwaan Haji, programme producer and Newscaster at Universal TV, the biggest Somali Satellite TV station. He raised a campaign on his programme Have Your Say to free the Chandlers, a British couple kidnapped by Somali pirates last year. During Ramadan the channel raised nearly a million dollars to support those effected by famine in Somalia.

Jamal Osman, award-winning journalist and filmmaker specialising in Africa. He runs Jamal Media, a production company that makes current affairs programes for British broadcasters. He has won several awards including the Amnesty International’s Gaby Rado Memorial Award 2010 and the news story of the year prize at the Foreign Press Association Awards 2009.

Image Credit: Andy Hall - Oxfam

He has reported from more than 80 countries and 11 wars, from Angola to Vietnam and was one of the first journalists to be defined as a ‘war correspondent’

Martin Bell, joined the BBC in 1962 and is one of the best known and distinguised journalists of his generation, he has reported from Vietnam, the Middle East, Nigeria, Angola, and Northern Ireland during the “Troubles”.

Twice awared the Royal Television Society’s Reporter of the Year award, Bell changed course in 1997 and successfully ran as Independent MP on an anti sleaze ticket inTatton against Conservative Neil Hamilton.

He will be joining us at the Frontline Club with former BBC executive Vin Ray, to take a look back over his career reporting around the globe that includes an OBE, a shrapnel injury from Bosnia, and five books including A Very British Revolution: The Expenses Scandal and How To Save Our Democracy.

Join us to debate and launch the book Investigative Journalism: Dead or Alive? Edited by John Mair and Richard Keeble published by Abramis on September 20th. Author priced copies will be available on the night.

Chaired by Kevin Marsh, Former Editor BBC Radio Four’s the Today programme;

With:

John Ware, BBC Panorama;

Donal MacIntyre, investigative journalist;

Paul Lewis, special projects editor at the Guardian.

TRANSIT has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and the Independent amongst other publications and is currently on display at the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo. Updates about exhibitions and articles relating to the project can be found on the TRANSIT Facebook page. Copies of the TRANSIT book will be for sale at a signing after the event.

Rasmussen has won multiple awards including two at World Press Photo and is represented by London based agency, Panos Pictures.

He will be joining us in conversation with Richard Gizbert, presenter of Al Jazeera English’s The Listening Post, a weekly show that looks at news coverage by the world’s media. Gizbert has also spent 25 years working in the media world as a foreign correspondent, covering stories around the world.

Drawing on their experiences working with two very different global media players, Carr and Gizbert will be discussing the future of the news industry.

From the future of newspapers like the New York Times and whether they can adapt quickly enough to survive to the emergence of new business models offering alternative sources of funding. They will be addressing some of the big questions that are exercising many minds within the media.

A remarkable opportunity to debate the future of the news industry with two of its key players.

It was only when news came through of a gunman on Utøya that it began to become clear that something quite different was taking place in Norway.

As we mark the ten year anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, we will be examining the extent of our understanding of extremism.

Anders Behring Breivik has since been deemed a “mad man” by many commentators, who refuse to make a connection between his actions and the ideas of rightwing commentators cited in his manifesto.

For this event, in association with BBC Arabic, we will be investigating extremism in the 21st century and the process of radicalisation of groups and individuals.

What impact has the “war on terror” and other counter terrorism strategies had? Is there any truth in the suggestion that post 9/11 policy and rhetoric has fuelled not only Islamic extremism but the far right? And have we become so concerned with Islamic extremism that we’ve become blinkered to the threats from the far right?

We will be bringing together a panel of experts to discuss whether in the past decade we have seen a rise of rightwing and Islamic extremism.

Chaired by Margaret Gilmore, Senior Research Fellow with RUSI ((Royal United Services Institute) analysing United Kingdom Public Policy on National Security and Resilience. Formerly BBC Senior Home Affairs Correspondent and co-author of The Terrorist Hunters, a definitive account of the terrorist threat to the UK in the past five years.

WIth:

Dr Christina Hellmich, lecturer in International Relations at the University of Reading. She is a specialist in Middle East politics working in Yemen, with a particular research interest in political Islam and global terrorism. Her recent book, Al-Qaeda: From global network to local franchise (Zed 2011), examines the key sources that inform the present understanding of al-Qaeda.

Ghaffar Hussain, director of Training and Consultancy at the Quilliam Foundation; organising and delivering radicalisation awareness training, providing strategic consultancy for a wide range of public and private organisations and co-ordinating outreach efforts to a wide variety of individuals and groups. He is author of A Brief History of Islamism.

Dr Matthew Feldman, senior lecturer in 20th century history at the University of Northampton, and an editor of Wiley-Blackwell’s online journal Compass: Political Religions. He directs Northampton’s Radicalism and New Media research network, and co-edits Continuum Books; new monograph series, Historicising Modernism. He has published various publications on fascist ideology, wartime propaganda and far-right extremism since World War One. He acts as an expert witness on cases against the contemporary radical right in Europe and the US. He is currently researching Ezra Pound’s links to Italian Fascism; the nature of extreme right-wing ‘lone wolf’ terrorism in the 21st century, and the postwar evolution of fascist ideology and practice since 1945.

Hugo MacPherson, formerly manager of the MPower Youth Project which entered communities and schools to counter radicalisation as part of the government’s Prevent programme. Recently he was part of a UK team sent to the Middle East to advise on effective youth engagement policy during the Arab Spring. An Arabic speaker and formerly a producer on Al Jazeera, he has made films on youth in Beirut and Damascus and on football fanatics in Cairo.

EXTERNAL EVENT HELD AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN.

To mark ten years since the terrorists attacks on the United States, the Frontline Club is holding a special event to look at the extent to which 9/11 has defined our world today and will continue to shape our future.

We will be looking at the “War on Terror” that followed and the impact of the rhetoric, and the reality of a global battle cast in terms of “good vs. evil”: Is it a war that can be won? What has been the impact on a world that is increasingly interconnected?

We will take stock of the seismic events the world has witnessed - from wars waged in Iraq and Afghanistan to terrorists attacks from London to Mumbai and uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa.

Our panel will also try to make sense of other changes that have taken place - from increased surveillance to extraordinary rendition - and examine how the narrative employed by governments, leaders and the media shaped public attitudes.

Join us for a special event with a panel of experts to examine the world today and how the events of 10 years ago have shaped it and will continue to do so.

Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House who was living and working in New York on 9/11 and anchored the New York end of the special programme that night for BBC One.

Twitter: @paddy_o_c

With:

Isabel Hilton, international journalist and broadcaster and editor of chinadialogue.net. She began her career in journalism with Scottish Television, then worked for the Daily Express and the Sunday Times before joining the launch team for The Independent in 1986. In 1992 she became a presenter of the BBC’s flagship news programme, The World Tonight and a columnist for The Guardian. In 1999 she joined the New Yorker as a staff writer. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Granta, the New Statesman, El Pais, Index on Censorship and many other publications. She has reported from China, Latin America, Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and Europe and has written and presented several documentaries for BBC television. Since 2001 she has been a presenter of the BBC Radio Three’s cultural programme, Night Waves. She has authored and co-authored several books and holds honorary doctorates from Bradford and Stirling Universities. She was appointed OBE in 2010 for her contribution to raising environmental awareness in China.

Twitter: @isabelhilton

Mehdi Hasan, senior editor (politics) at the New Statesman and a former news and current affairs editor at Channel 4. He is co-author of Ed: the Milibands and the Making of a Labour Leader and author of the new ebook The Debt Delusion. His blog is here.

Twitter: @ns_mehdihasan

Carne Ross, a former British diplomat, author and journalist. Having resigned from the British foreign service after giving secret testimony to an official inquiry into the Iraq war, he then set up the world’s first independent diplomatic advisory group, Independent Diplomat, which advises marginalised countries and groups around the world.  He is author of The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Will Take Power And Change Politics in the 21st Century.

Twitter: @carneross

Maajid Nawaz, co-Founder and executive director of Quilliam and Founder of Khudi, he was formerly on the UK national leadership for the global Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT). He was involved in HT for almost 14 years and was a founding member of HT in Denmark and Pakistan and eventually served four years in an Egyptian prison as an Amnesty International ‘prisoner of conscience’. In prison, he gradually began changing his views until finally renouncing the Islamist ideology while remaining Muslim. He now engages in counter-Islamist thought-generating, social-activism, writing, debating and media appearances.

Twitter: @MaajidNawaz

Michael Goldfarb, author, journalist, broadcaster and GlobalPost’s London correspondent. For NPR and the BBC, Goldfarb has covered conflicts and conflict resolution in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, the Middle East and Latin America. He covered the war in Iraq as an unembedded reporter based in Kurdistan. His book on the conflict, Ahmad’s War, Ahmad’s Peace: Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq was named one of The New York Times’ Notable Books of 2005. Since September 11 2001 he has reported extensively on radical Islam from Cairo to Tehran to the streets of London. On September 11 2001 he was live on the air from 10 until noon in the US presenting part of NPR’s coverage of the event. 

Twitter: @MGEmancipation

IN ASSOCIATION WITH BBC ARABIC.

The combination of Tunisia’s ‘gerontocracy’  and its high youth demographic has been a diminishing trust in the new government.  There is also a constant conflict between the idealists, who want all traces of the former regime erased, and the realists, who are concerned that further political upheaval will result in an increase in military power.

In Egypt, protesters have returned to Tahrir Square in a bid to salvage the revolution with a fresh set of demands including the curbing of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ powers, an end to military trials and scrapping of new anti-protest laws.

Join us at the Frontline club with a panel of experts to discuss what the future holds for Tunisia and Egypt.

Chaired by Steve Crawshaw, international advocacy director, Amnesty International and co-author of Small Acts of Resistance How courage, tenacity and ingenuity can change the world.

With:

Khalid Abdalla, is a British-Egyptian actor, producer and activist. His films include United 93, The Kite Runner, Green Zone, and the upcoming Egyptian film In the Last Days of the City, filmed during the last two years of Mubarak’s Rule. Co-founder of Zero Production, an independent film and documentary production house based in Cairo, earlier this year he launched Mosireen, a non-profit media centre in downtown Cairo to support filmmakers and citizen journalists through the revolution.

Rosemary Hollis, professor of Middle East policy studies and director of the Olive Tree Programme at City University.

Dr Maha Azzam, Associate Fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House.

Brian Whitaker, journalist for The Guardian since 1987 and its Middle East editor from 2000-2007. He is currently an editor on the paper’s “Comment Is Free” section. Author of What’s Really Wrong with the Middle East.

What has been achieved in Afghanistan and Iraq and, ten years on, what could be learnt from the Arab Spring about change in the region? Less than five months into a new campaign in Libya, is it time that we reassess our involvement in the Arab world?

We will also be examining the doctrine of counterinsurgency  - or COIN - that was advocated so strongly in both Afghanistan and Iraq and asking what lessons can be learnt that could shape future policy.

Chaired by David Loyn, BBC’s international development correspondent

With:

Frank Ledwidge, served in the Balkan wars and Iraq as a military intelligence officer and in Afghanistan as a civilian advisor. Former lecturer at the RAF College, Cranwell and author of Losing Small Wars: British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jean MacKenzie, senior correspondent for GlobalPost and former program director for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting in Kabul. She has reported from Afghanistan since 2004 and written extensively about the war. She is currently working on a chapter on counterinsurgency in Afghanistan for a book project being sponsored by NYU.

Malte Roschinski, security consultant, political analyst and author based in Germany. As journalist with AFP news agency, he reported from post-Taliban Afghanistan in late 2001. Lived for eight months in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2010, working as intelligence analyst for clients in the humanitarian sector.

She had watched the revolution unfold as her friends slowly stopped coming to school, and her neighbours started to disappear in fear of the secret police. Now, as an Iranian exile in Britain, Mohammadi struggled to fit in and pushed away her Iranian background.

She will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with Pooneh Ghoddoosi from BBC Persian TV to talk about her journey back to her homeland to find the family she left behind, and to rediscover her Iranian identity after 17 years away from the country that she loved.

Now splitting her time between London and Florence,  Mohammadi is a writer, broadcaster and journalist specialising in Iran. Her work has seen her nominated for awards such as the Amnesty Human Rights in Journalism Award and the American Society of Magazine Editors for a National Magazine award 2011. She has also controversially covered issues such as the ‘epidemic’ of drug abuse in Iran post-1979 and Western attitudes to Iranian women.

We will also take a look at his career to date, from his Oscar-winning documentary One Day in September, about the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics to Touching the Void, one of the most successful documentaries in British history.

In 2006 Kevin directed the multi-award winning Last King of Scotland which tells the relationship between Idi Amin and his young Scottish doctor and followed this with the excellent documentary, My Enemy’s Enemy which focused on the one-time Gestapo commander Klaus Barbie, infamously known as “The Butcher of Lyon.”

In 2009 Kevin adapted the BBC drama State of Play into a feature film starring Russell Crowe. Life in a Day is one of two films Kevin has released this year, The Eagle is a fictional film which tells the story of a young Roman officer searching to recover the Roman eagle standard of his father’s legion.

Being one of the few directors to work successfully within both documentary and fiction, Kevin has a fascinating insight into the film world across the variety of methods and techniques he has used to create some of the most interesting and powerful films of the last two decades.

Kevin’s directorial work:

The Making of an Englishman (1995) Chaplin’s Goliath (1996) The Moving World of George Rickey (1997) Howard Hawks: American Artist (1997) Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance (1998) One Day in September (2000) Humphrey Jennings (2000) A Brief History of Errol Morris (2000) Being Mick (2001) Touching the Void (2003) The Last King of Scotland (2006) My Enemy’s Enemy (2007) State of Play (2009) The Eagle (2011) Life in a Day (2011)

We will be bringing together a panel of experts to examine the situation on the ground in Syria. Could the international community be doing more to intervene in what some claim are crimes against humanity being committed by Syrian forces?

Unlike Egypt, the protests began not with the call for the Bashar al-Asad to stand down but that he enact promised reforms. Following the violent attacks against protesters the tone has changed, however it remains unclear if the ousting of Bashar al-Asad is a possible outcome.

Join us with Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House to discuss the situation in Syria and what the future holds for the Syrian people.

With:

Daniel Pye, a Damascus-based freelance journalist who has worked as deputy editor of a Syrian current affairs magazine since February 2011.

Ammar Waqqaf, member of the British Syrian Society.

BBC Newsnight’s Sue Lloyd-Roberts who has been one of the only Western journalists to report from inside Syria since the protests began.

Malik Al-Abdeh, chief editor of Barada TV a London-based Syrian opposition satellite channel and former BBC journalist.

Christopher Phillips, Syria analyst in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Middle East team and author of Contemporary Arab Identity: The daily reproduction of the Arab World to be published in early 2012.

Free drinks will be provided courtesy of Chivas, and a brief debate on the theme of “Who Gets the Credit?” will fuel discussion throughout the evening, with a panel composed of:

Freelance photojournalist David Hoffman, who spoke at the Frontline Club in February 2010.

Photographer, professional printer and Creative Director at Metro Imaging Steve Macleod.

Getty Images’ Vice President of Assignment Aidan Sullivan.

Juliette Atkinson Sales Manager, Demotix.

The discussion will be moderated by Editor in Charge, Wider Image Desk at Thomson Reuters, Alexia Singh.

With Northern Sudan’s President Omar al Bashir wanted by the ICC for war crimes and the vast majorities of NGO’s being based in the south, will the North even recognize its legitimacy? Will this be the real start of peace, or will it merely be the start of another land grab explosion by the North?

Analysts fear that the South will become a failed state before it has even had a chance at success. With little to no public services and foreign aid being the main source of food, the South stands in a precarious position and faces an up hill struggle.

Join us at the Frontline club with a panel of experts to discuss what the future holds for North and South Sudan - will this be the start of peaceful beginnings and economic prosperity for both? Or will fraught relations win out again?

Chaired by Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society. He was Africa editor of The Independent from 1986 to 1994 before being appointed Diplomatic Editor, and then joining The Economist as their Africa Editor. Author of Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles.

With:

Lindsey Hilsum, Channel 4 News’ International Editor.

Dr Ahmed Al-Shahi, Research Fellow and Co-founder of the Sudan Programme at St Antony’s College, Oxford University.

Natznet Tesfay, head of Africa Forecasting at Exclusive Analysis Ltd. Prior to joining Exclusive Analysis she worked in the field of urban development, consulting for municipal governments in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.

Mohamed Abdalla Ali Eltom, Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of the Republic of Sudan in London.

This vast campaign of kill/capture missions is veiled in secrecy and has become a major part of the counter insurgency. But how does it level with another feature of the counter insurgency involved in winning the hearts and minds of the people of Afghanistan?

With a panel of experts we will be examining the effects of the kill/capture missions on the ground, looking at how they are conducted and how the intelligence is obtained. What effect are they having and could they play a definitive role in ending the war?

Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.

With:

Lieutenant General (Retd) Sir Graeme Lamb, KBE, CMG, DSO, commissioned into the British Army in 1973 for the following 38 years he deployed in various theatres of war during which he commanded on operations at ever rank. He stepped down as Commander of the Field Army in July 2009 and returned to Afghanistan at the direct request of General David Petraeus and General Stanley McChrystal of the US Army to scope a programme designed to repeat the success in Iraq whereby insurgents are persuaded to give up their arms.

Emal Pasarly, multimedia editor for the BBC Pashto-Persian service.

Kate Clark, senior analyst for the Afghanistan Analysts Network. Her involvement in Afghanistan goes back to 1999 when she was the BBC Kabul correspondent, she was a frontline reporter during the 2001 war and the fall of the Taliban. Her recent investigation into US targeted killings in Afghanistan is entitled ‘The Takhar attack: Targeted killings and the parallel worlds of US intelligence and Afghanistan’.

Stephen Grey, investigative writer and broadcaster and author of Operation Snakebite: The Explosive True Story of an Afghan Desert Siege, about the war in Helmand, Afghanistan. His most recent film America’s Secret Killers, about the US-led kill/capture program in Afghanistan, was broadcast on Dispatches on June 6.

Dr Tim Bird, lecturer at the Joint Services Command and Staff College and the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London and author of Afghanistan: How the West Lost its Way. His teaching specialities are European Security, US Foreign and Security Policy, and International Security.

They were double crossed by their body guards and what followed was a nightmare 40 days in captivity. Force-marched into the desolate hills they were held in a succession of caves by a gang of armed men, all paranoically high on the amphetamine-like local plant, khat. The gang’s hideout was attacked by rival pirates, Freeman was subjected to mock execution by one of his captors and the threat of being handed over to Islamists who would undoubtedly execute him was constant lingering fear.

Colin Freeman, who is now chief foreign correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph will be joining us at the Frontline Club to discuss his new book Kidnapped: Life as a Somali pirate hostage in which he recalls the experience.

Chaired by Inigo Gilmore, award winning journalist and filmmaker who has worked across the world, with extensive experience in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. He won the Royal Television Society Award in 2011 for his work in Haiti last year, following earthquake.

At the same time, the use of super-injunctions (or ‘gagging orders’) by celebrities to stop the press revealing details about scandals has also been called in to question. The issue, which has been debated heavily in the past, flared up again when details of celebrities who had allegedly taken out super-injunctions were posted on Twitter in May.

Some say super-injunctions are necessary to protect the private lives of public figures, but others argue they are an example of discriminatory justice used predominantly by men who are rich and famous.

Join us at the Frontline Club where we will be focusing on issues of privacy, justice and journalistic ethics and asking if  the current system of law and regulation is – or is not – in need of reform.

Chaired by Clive Coleman, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Law in Action programme, former barrister and principal lecturer in law.

With:

William Bennett, a barrister who specialises in defamation and privacy law.  He is based at 5RB, the leading media law chambers;

David Allen Green, a lawyer and writer.  He is head of media at Preiskel & Co and was selected as one of the “Hot 100 Lawyers” for 2011 by The Lawyer.  He is also legal correspondent of the New Statesman and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2010 for his “Jack of Kent” blog;

David Aaronovitch, writer, broadcaster, commentator and regular columnist for The Times;

Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator.

In association with BBC College of Journalism.

Ross Perlin, an ex intern himself and the author of Intern Nation will be at the Frontline Club to take part in a panel discussion about internships and his investigation into a trend which, he argues, is destroying “what’s left of the ordered world of training, hard work and fair compensation”.

This issue was highlighted in early February when it was reported that a selection of prestigious internships at major City firms, media outlets and PR companies were auctioned off to party donors at the Conservatives’ annual Black and White Party.

Are internships for the privileged, and to what extent are those professions where intern experience is compulsory now closed off young people from lower income families?

Or with no framework in place to protect their rights, is the internship a money-saving system for businesses, formalising the exploitation of young people by requiring them to do jobs that would otherwise be paid positions and work long hours without pay?

Join us at the Frontline Club to discuss the world of the intern and the culture of work.

Chaired by Martin Bright, political editor of The Jewish Chronicle and founder of New Deal of the Mind, an organisation which aims to boost employment in Britain’s creative industries. In 1996 he was appointed education correspondent at The Observer, where he also worked as home affairs editor, in 2005 he became political editor of the New Statesman, a job which he left in January 2009.

With:

Ross Perlin, former unpaid intern and author of Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy, he is now gainfully employed researching obsolescing languages in China;

Fiona O’Cleirigh, freelance journalist and vice-chair of the London Freelance Branch of the NUJ.  She set up the NUJ’s Cashback for Interns campaign, to help unpaid media interns sue former employers for the National Minimum Wage.  The union has recently won its first intern’s National Minimum Wage case at London Central Employment Tribunal;

Andrew Scherer, marketing manager of internship agency Inspiring Interns, having started at the company as an intern and has seen almost 900 graduates find placements through Inspiring Interns. Currently completing a guide to internships to be published in the autumn.

Dupsy Abiola, founder and CEO of Intern Avenue, Oxford Alumni and former employed barrister. Intern Avenue hosts the world’s first Intern Directory™ and connects interns and employers by automatically matching them via their objective criteria.;

Dom Potter, co-founder of Internocracy, the youth-led social enterprise which works to lower the barriers and raise the bar in internships. Former intern he has since found work with the OECD, Involve and the Young Foundation. He is also a Trustee of TimeBank, a Fellow of the RSA and was Future 100 Young Social Entrepreneur of the year in 2009.

But if the days of the foreign press pack who parachute in for a big story are numbered, what are the opportunities for this new generation of journalists and how can they make the most of them?

This event will seek to answer some of the questions raised during previous discussions about the changing nature of foreign reporting - namely “How do I do it?”.

We’ll be bringing together a panel of experts to talk about their experiences of reporting, including kit, the realities of going it alone, and working relationships with the established news organisations.

This event is in association with the BBC College of Journalism

Chaired by Matthew Eltringham, editor of the BBC College of Journalism website and events.

With:

Vaughan Smith, independent video journalist, co-founder of Frontline Television News agency a group of freelance journalists who reported from the frontlines of the world’s conflict from 1989 - 2003 following which in he founded the Frontline Club;

Ben de Pear, is Head of foreign news at channel 4 news. Before taking up this position he was a field producer for Chanel 4 and Sky news, and has worked all over Africa the middle east and the Balkans. He has been part of teams that have won numerous awards including last weeks Amnesty award for TV- for the third year in a row. The winning story which depicted executions in Sri Lanka was today cited by the UN as reflecting “crimes of the highest order- definitive war crimes.”

Kitty Logan, independent video journalist and TV reporter specialising in coverage of developing countries and areas of conflict. Over the past nine years she has covered foreign news for several major broadcasters, including Sky News. She also regularly films for international aid agencies and the UN. She began her freelance career in Afghanistan in 2002 and has since worked in many other countries, including Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon and most recently Libya as a self-contained ‘one-woman-band’ – producing packages and lives for a 24 hour news channel. Kitty Logan uses a simple setup of camera, edit laptop and BGAN to allow her to operate solo from anywhere in the world.

Rosie Garthwaite,  producer and occasional reporter at Al Jazeera English since 2006, she spent a year in the army in 1999 and went on to report on their activities as a cub reporter at 22 years old freelancing in Iraq. She has worked for The Baghdad Bulletin, Times, Reuters and BBC in Basra and Baghdad before going on to join the BBC as staff in 2004. She is author of How to avoid being killed in a war zone: The essential survival guide for dangerous places, a collection of practical advice from journalists and operators including John Simpson, Sebastian Junger, Jon Snow and Wadah Khanfar.

Featuring a presentation by Graham Holliday, independent freelance foreign correspondent, media trainer and online journalism specialist. He started freelancing in Vietnam, where he was based for ten years. He later worked for Scoopt, the worlds’ first citizen journalism photo agency and as the Frontline Club’s Digital Media Editor. He moved to Kigali, Rwanda in August 2009 where he runs the newswire and blog Kigali Wire. He recently appeared on the BBC World Service programme From our own Correspondent.

Two years on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has held onto the presidencey, although it is believed that the balance of power is moving away from him as he struggles with his former patron, Iran’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.

We will be discussing what is happening at the heart of Iran’s government and examining what has happened to the people’s movement since 2009 at June’s First Wednesday.

What impact have the protests in the Arab world and the toppling of Egypt’s and Tunisia’s leaders had inside Iran? Are we likely to see protests on the scale of 2009 in the future?

Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House will be back in the chair for June’s First Wednesday, giving you the opportunity to question a panel of experts.

With:

Saeed Kamali Dehghan, award-winning Iranian journalist who writes for The Guardian. He was named 2010 Journalist of the Year at the Foreign Press Association Awards;

Sanam Dolatshahi, producer for BBC Persian TV interactive programme;

Potkin Azarmehr, Iranian born blogger and activist;

Lindsey Hilsum, International editor of Channel 4 News;

Nazenin Ansari, Iranian journalist working as the diplomatic editor of Kayhan London, a weekly Persian-language newspaper.

Leila Ahmed, who is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School, will be joining us at the Club in conversation with Azadeh Moaveni, Iranian-American writer, journalist and author of Lipstick Jihad, to discuss her new book A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America and her surprising discoveries about Muslim women, Islamism and democracy.

At a time when both Islamist and democratic forces are dramatically changing the Middle East, Leila Ahmed’s analysis of the resurgence of the veil from Egypt to Saudi Arabia challenges many assumptions about women’s rights and activism.

Leila Ahmed was the first professor of Women’s Studies in Religion at Harvard University and is author of Women and Gender in Islam.

The Oceans have a vital role as the earth’s circulatory system. But if the current state of decline continues it will reach a point where it can no longer function effectively and our planet will be unable to sustain the ecosystems that support humankind.

The Fish Fight campaign fronted Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Sir David Attenborough’s Horizon on The Death of the Oceans? have put the spotlight on the state of our oceans.  To ahead of the release of new scientific findings from IPSO the Frontline Club will kick off the first of a series of events with a panel of experts discussing what is happening to our oceans and what can be done about it.

In association with Communications Inc

Chaired by Fiona Harvey, the Guardian environment correspondent.

With:

Don Hinrichsen, award winning writer and editor and author of Our Common Seas and Coastal Waters of the World, Trends, Threats and Strategies. He is currently the senior development manager for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in London and writes frequently on environment, population and resource issues for a variety of publications in the US and Europe.

Dr Alex David Rogers, professor in Conservation Biology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford and senior research fellow at the Institute of Zoology, London. His research focuses on the diversity, ecology, conservation and evolution of marine species. A founder member of the IPSO project (International Programme on the State of the Ocean), bringing together world leaders in ocean science with the aim of winning policy change to save the health of the global ocean;

Richard Page, one of Greenpeace International’s leading oceans campaigners with primary responsibility for coordinating the organisation’s campaign for a global network of marine reserves covering 40% of the oceans.  With Greenpeace for 18 years he has been heavily involved with the marine reserves campaign since its inception in 2003, both helping develop policy and implementing political and active campaign work;

Professor Charles R C Sheppard, professor at the department of Biological Sciences University of Warwick and tropical/marine environmental adviser for Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s Commissioner for UK Overseas Territories. He has been a participant on Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change since 2002, fellow of Linnean Society of London, Conservation Fellow of Zoological Society of London and advisor to several tropical country governments on marine environmental affairs.

What impact will the death of Osama bin Laden have on Al Qaeda and on the people who support its cause? We will be bringing together a panel of experts to discuss what impact his death will have on extremist Islamic groups and to look at the implications for Pakistan now that it has emerged that the Al Qaeda leader was hiding in Abbotabad.

We will also be discussing what Osama bin Laden’s discovery so close to Pakistan’s capital means for Afghanistan where the ‘War on Terror’ was launched.

The operation to kill bin Laden will improve President Obama’s standing in the US and the West, but what does it mean for US foreign policy? How it will play out on the ground, particularly in Asia and the Middle East?

Chaired by Humphrey Hawksley, leading BBC foreign correspondent, author and commentator on world affairs.

With:

Lynne O’Donnell, former bureau chief in Kabul for AFP, and the author of High Tea in Mosul: The True Story of Two Englishwomen in War-torn Iraq. She is the recipient of a 2010 Human Rights Press Award for coverage of the plight of Afghan women;

Dr Farzana Shaikh, associate fellow of the Asia Programme, at Chatham House and author of Making Sense of Pakistan;

Aamer Ahmed Khan, head of BBC Urdu Service;

Rosemary Hollis, professor of Middle East policy studies and director of the Olive Tree Programme at City University;

Zaki Chehab, Arab journalist, editor-in-chief of ArabsToday.net, the largest Arabic-language news website and author of Iraq Ablaze: Inside the Insurgency and Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of the Militant Islamic Movement

No one can predict where these momentous events will lead and what the repercussions will be for years to come.

For this special event held at the The Royal Institution of Great Britain the Frontline Club and BBC Arabic Service will be bringing together some of the key players, journalists and experts to discuss what has taken place in Egypt and the surrounding region so far and to try to gauge what the future might hold.

With those that were instrumental in organising the uprising in Egypt we will be discussing the role that new technology has played; is social media simply a new tool or has its role been more fundamental, changing not only the way that people communicate but also the way that they think and act? We will be discussing how and when the movements where formed, what common ideas they share and how they see things moving forward.

The discussion, which will be in two parts, will be chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.

Panel:

Part 1:

Alaa Abd El Fattah: By day a Free/Open Source Software developer, by night he dons his mask and cape and patrols the streets of Cairo, jumping from campaign to campaign building websites, providing support and training, looking out for activists in need. He “likes to pretend” that his work on the Egyptian Blogs Aggregator helped bring in a new era of citizen journalism and usher in a new generation of digital activists.

Sam Farah is the lead presenter of BBC Arabic’s flagship interactive programme Nuqtat Hewar (Talking Point). He has interviewed leading personalities and over the last months has conducted numerous programmes linking bloggers, activists and supporters of regimes from across the region live on television and radio to discuss events as they unfold.

Manal Hassan, is co-founder of the Egyptian GNU/Linux Users Group (EGLUG) in 2004, and has extensive experience in working with NGOs, human rights activists, and children on web technologies and new media. She won the Best of Blogs (BOBs) and Reporters without Borders award together with her husband Alaa Abd El Fattah in 2005.

Louis Lewarne, was born in Edinburgh in 1979 and has been living in Cairo since 2006. He is normally involved in independent film production, but at the start of the Egyptian revolution and the internet blackout he started occupiedcairo.org, a collectively written blog on the events in Egypt.

Part 2:

Khalid Abdalla, British-Egyptian actor and producer, whose films include United 93, The Kite Runner, and Green Zone. Co-founder of Zero Production, a film and documentary production house based in Cairo, he is currently setting up a non-profit media centre called Mossireen (Adamant) to support filmmakers and citizen journalists through the revolution.

Dr Omar Ashour, lecturer in Middle East politics and the director of the MA in Middle East Studies Program at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, author of The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements and a pro-democracy activist close to the youth movement in Cairo.

Omar Robert Hamilton, Egyptian/British film-maker and the producer of the Palestine Festival of Literature. He is currently in pre-production on his third short, Though I Know the River is Dry, a crowd-sourced fiction film that will be shot in Palestine this May. He flew to Cairo to take part in, and document, the Revolution. www.orhamilton.com

Salma Said, Born in 1985 in Cairo, to a political family she has been involved in political activism since the age of 15 with the eruption of the second Palestinian intifada and joined Kifaya movement in 2005 when she discovered the so-called Egyptian blogosphere.

Join the Frontline Club and New Statesman for a provocative public debate featuring Julian Assange, editor in chief of WikiLeaks.

Over the past 12 months, official secrecy has been challenged like never before. Three of the biggest ever leaks of classified information – the Iraq War Logs, the Afghanistan War Logs and Cablegate – shook the world and prompted governments to reconsider how they share information.

Since the start of the Obama administration in 2009, the US government has brought charges against five defendants suspected of leaking classified information. Before Obama, the US government had only ever filed similar charges three times in 40 years.

For this very special event at Kensington Town Hall, the New Statesman and the Frontline Club host a challenging debate in which some of the most prominent public figures on secrecy and transparency issues will go head to head.

Amid the intensifying crackdown on whistleblowers, the debate will ask: are UK and US officials correct to argue that those who publish leaks threaten national security? Or do we need them to expose wrongdoing because, as transparency advocates argue, governments always abuse secrecy?

The event will feature an interactive section where the audience will be able to vote on the motion.

Chair: Jason Cowley, editor of the New Statesman.

Proposition:

Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks

Julian Assange is the 39-year-old editor in chief of WikiLeaks. Queensland-born Assange has been the subject of public calls for his assassination from leading US politicians and faces an ongoing espionage investigation. In 2010 he overwhelmingly won Time magazine’s Readers’ Choice Person of the Year poll and was named Le Monde’s Man of the Year. He has also been awarded the Amnesty International UK Media Award and the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. In February 2011 his organisation, WikiLeaks, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize after publishing three of the biggest leaks of classified information in history, the Afghan War Diaries, the Iraq War Logs and Cablegate.

Clayton Swisher, head of Al-Jazeera’s Transparency Unit

Clayton Swisher is the head of Al Jazeera’s Transparency Unit (the team that produced the Palestine Papers in January 2011). An ex-federal investigator-turned-investigative journalist, he is a former Director of Programs at the Middle East Institute and a current term member with the Council on Foreign Relations. As a journalist he has covered the 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the on-going war in Afghanistan, and has also authored two books: The Truth About Camp David (New York: Nation Books, 2004) and The Palestine Papers: The End of the Road? (London: Hesperus, Mar 31, 2011).

Mehdi Hasan, senior political editor, New Statesman

Mehdi Hasan is a former editor in the news-and-current-affairs department at Channel 4, where he worked on the award-winning Dispatches documentary strand. He is a regular guest on Sky News and the BBC, appearing regularly on Question Time and The Daily Politics. He is an occasional presenter on LBC radio and the co-author of a forthcoming biography of Ed Miliband – Ed Miliband and the Remaking of the Labour Party (London: Biteback, summer 2011).

Opposition:

Sir David Richmond, former director, defence and intelligence, British Foreign & Commonwealth Office

David Richmond was a British diplomat for more than 30 years. His career included postings to Baghdad, Brussels and New York, where he worked on the UN Security Council. In 2000 he became the first UK representative to the EU’s political and security committee in Brussels and was closely involved in the creation of European security and defence policy. In 2003 he returned to Baghdad (where he had first been posted 20 years earlier) and was later appointed UK Special Representative for Iraq. In his last posting, he was director general for general defence and intelligence and a member of the Foreign Office Board.

Bob Ayers, former director of the US Department of Defence Information Systems Security Programme

Bob Ayers had a distinguished career in the US government. In 1992, he was appointed director of the defence department’s Information Systems Security Programme. He next assumed the post of director, defensive information warfare, leading the programme designed to protect DoD systems from systematic cyber attacks. From 1990-92, he was responsible for the security of more than 40,000 classified intelligence-processing systems at 55 locations across the world. Bob is a noted public figure, appearing on television and radio in the US, in the UK and worldwide, and publishing many articles.

Douglas Murray, author and political commentator

Douglas Murray is a bestselling writer and award-winning political commentator. Since 2007 he has been director of the Centre for Social Cohesion. From April 2011 he will be associate director of the Henry Jackson Society. Murray appears regularly in the British and foreign media. A frequent guest on Question Time and Newsnight, he is also a columnist for Standpoint magazine and writes for many other publications, including the Spectator and Wall Street Journal. In 2008 he co-authored Victims of Intimidation: Freedom of Speech Within Europe’s Muslim Communities. His latest book, on the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday, will be published later this year.

Also participating: former MI5 whistleblower Annie Machon and HBOS whistleblower Paul Moore.

In Libya, hackers have attacked the state broacaster’s website and scenes of people throwing their shoes at the screen in a mark of disrespect are reported to have taken place in Libya as they did in Egypt and other countries where the media is regarded as an instrument of government.

The state-controlled TV channels, radio, newspapers and magazines were re-casting themselves as champions of radical change, while just days before the protestors in Tahrir Square had been ignored or denounced.

But can a leopard change its spots? Already there has been criticism of Egyptian broadcasters and newspapers for stirring up xenophobia and for remaining hostile to the pro-democracy movements.

What is required in order that a genuine revolution takes place in the media - not only in Egypt but in other countries where autocrats have used it to bolster their power? What happens in countries such as Iran where control of the media remains absolute?

Join us at the Frontline Club when we will be discussing what the future holds for state media, the impact of channels such as Al Jazeera and BBC Arabic, and the ways that people are using the internet and other social media to circumvent that power.

The discussion will be chaired by author and broadcaster Tom Fenton.

With:

Faisal J. Abbas, London-based journalist, blogger and social commentator. He writes regularly for Huffington Post on Middle Eastern affairs and has worked with several leading Arab media outlets such as Asharq Al Awsat, where he established and edited the paper’s weekly ‘Media Supplement’, Al Hayat and Future Television of Lebanon;

Dina Matar, senior lecturer in Arab Media and Political Communication at SOAS;

Hugh Miles, award-winning investigative journalist specialising in the Middle East and North Africa, author of Al Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World and Playing Cards in Cairo and contributing editor of the American University in Cairo’s Centre for Television Journalism media journal;

Ayman Mohyeldin, Middle East-based correspondent for Al Jazeera English.

Multicultural Britain has plenty to offer by way of contrasts and acute social issues for photojournalists to explore though. Save The Children has brought together a collective of British photographers to put the spotlight on poverty in the UK. An eye-opening presentation of photographs will be accompanied by a discussion with two photographers. Liz Hingley and Gideon Mendel will speak about their experiences of working in the UK, covering issues on their doorstep. What are the challenges photojournalists face at home compared to overseas? Problems of access, media interest and legal issues will all be covered.

This event will be moderated by Diane Smyth, deputy editor of the British Journal of Photography. She has written about photography for Aperture, PDN, Guardian.co.uk, Thetimes.co.uk, The Telegraph’s Telephoto site, Creative Review and Philosophy of Photography.

Liz Hingley ’s photography intimately documents political and social issues, with a particular interest in alternative modes of community living. Hingley graduated from Brighton University with a first class BA Honours in Editorial Photography in 2007. Her work has been exhibited internationally, her recent awards include being selected for PND’s top 30, The Eugene Smith award, the Ian Parry scholarship and Canon female photographer of the year. Dewi Lewis Publishing launched her book Under Gods: stories from Soho Road in March 2011.

Liz Hingley’s work for Save the Children has been made possible through the generous support of Fuji film.

Gideon Mendel is a South African photographer based in the UK and has won six World Press Photo Awards, the Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography and the Amnesty International Media Award. The bulk of his work is for NGOs overseas, but he stayed in the UK for one of his recent projects, Kingsmead Eyes, developing the photographic talents of children from the deprived area around the Kingsmead Estate in Hackney. The project was part of the 3EyesOn project which Mendel developed with fellow photographer Crispin Hughes. Mendel spoke at the Frontline Club in 2008 about nearly 20 years of photographing HIV in Africa and raising awareness of the problems AIDS sufferers face. In his current practice he is addressing the issue of climate change through developing a body of work on the global impact of flooding on the world’s poorest people.

In contrast to prime minister David Cameron’s claims last year that he would pursue a “more hard-headed” foreign policy focused on boosting business, Britain and France both spearheaded NATO plans to establish a no-fly zone over Libya.

Join us with Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House to discuss the rules of engagement and the new political landscape: How much of an influence can the West expect to have in the Middle East and if they do intervene, what is the criteria? Why Libya but not Bahrain and Syria? And what of Saudi Arabia - how much of a game-changer would it be if its people were to push for regime change?

With:

Chair by Raymond Snoddy, freelance journalist who presents the BBC’s Newswatch and writes regularly for a variety of publications, previously media editor of The Times.

Kevin Marsh, executive editor of the BBC College of Journalism;

Laura Oliver, community co-ordinator for Guardian News and Media and formerly editor of journalism.co.uk;

Judith Townend, freelance journalist and events co-ordinator, former journalism.co.uk reporter and co-organiser of the news:rewired conferences.

Egyptian author, political and cultural commentator Ahdaf Soueif will be joining us in conversation with BBC presenter Mishal Husain, to discuss her experiences at the heart of the protest in Tahrir Square during those momentous 18 days, looking at the roots of the pro-democracy movement and addressing the question of where her country goes from here.

Born in Cairo and educated in Egypt and England, Ahdaf Soueif is the author of two collections of short stories; Aisha (1983) and Sandpiper (1996), two novels; In the Eye of the Sun (1992) and the bestselling The Map of Love which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1999. And a collection of essays, Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground (2004).

Nick Robinson will be looking back at a career that began at Manchester’s Piccadilly Radio before he joined the BBC as a production trainee in 1986. Apart from  three years at ITV News as political editor until 2005, Nick Robinson has remained at the Corporation.

Showing clips of his work and the work of those journalists who inspired him, Nick Robinson will be remembering the significant milestones in a career that includes stints on On the Record, Panorama and 14 years on the politics beat.

In association with the BBC College of Journalism.

What are the demands of the Taliban and what will it mean for the people of Afghanistan, including women who have until now been left out of the peace process?

Chaired by David Loyn, BBC international development correspondent.

With:

Rachel Reid, Afghanistan researcher fro Human Rights Watch;

Shaykh Abdullah Anas Bashir, founder of The TARUF Association and a veteran of the Afghan Jihad;

Karen Pierce, FCO Director for South Asia and Afghanistan and UK SRAP;

Emal Pasarly, multimedia editor for the BBC Pashto-Persian service.

Picture credit: Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith

The talk will feature an exclusive preview screening of an excerpt from an expolosive BBC World Debate which will be broadcast by BBC World News during March. The BBC debate is entitled “Is Homosexuality unAfrican?”. It features prominent African leaders, including legislators who have proposed clamping down on homosexual activities, as well as gay rights activists from the continent.

After highlights from the BBC World Debate, a panel of experts will be discussing gay rights in Africa and the men and women who seek asylum in the UK to escape persecution as a result of their sexuality.

On the panel:

John Bosco Nyombi is a gay Ugandan man. Fearing being imprisoned or killed in Uganda, he fled to Britain in 2001 and started an eight-year campaign to claim assylum in the UK, which he eventually won in 2009.

Jonathan Cooper OBE is a barrister specialising in human rights, and Chief Executive of the Human Dignity Trust. The Trust is a new body set up to investigate the legality of laws that criminalise homosexual acts wherever those laws exist in the world.

Moderating the event: Ben Cashdan, producer of the BBC World Debate “Is Homosexuality unAfrican” and director of Broad Daylight Films in Johannesburg. Ben has produced more than 20 documentaries about human rights issues in South Africa and around the world.

The focus will be the latest news from the region and a broader look at the people behind the protests - who are they, what has shaped their ideas and what do they plan to do next?

We will also be beginning to look forward at the prospects for democracy and examining Western diplomacy in the light of such great political shifts.

This month’s First Wednesday will be chaired by BBC presenter Mishal Husain.

With:

Noman Benotman, a senior analyst at Quilliam. He was previously a leader of the jihadist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and an associate of senior al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan. In September 2010, he published an open letter to his former colleague Osama bin Laden calling on him to abandon violence;

Professor David Held, Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science, co-director of LSE Global Governance;

Sir Richard Dalton, associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House and a senior former diplomat and ambassador to Libya (1999 – 2002) and Iran (2003 – 2006);

Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst.

President Mugabe is now pressing for fresh elections in 2011, despite MDC leader Tsvangirai saying that they could not take place without reforms and constitutional review.

Analysts fear that Zimbabwe could be marred by violence in a repeat of 2008, when Mugabe lost the popular vote, but forced a win in a runoff election. With the military, police and state apparatus on his side there is little chance that Mugabe would allow a remotely free or fair election would likely ensure his removal from power.

Join us at the Frontline Club with a panel of experts to discuss what the coming year holds for Zimbabwe - could there be a fair election, or will violence and intimidation again escalate?

Chaired by Gerry Jackson, founder of SW Radio Africa - the independent Zimbabwean radio station that broadcasts to Zimbabwe on shortwave and worldwide via the internet. She has been reporting on Zimbabwe for over 25 years.

With:

Geoff Hill, bureau chief in Johannesburg for The Washington Times and author of The Battle for Zimbabwe and What Happens After Mugabe?;

Chofamba Innocent Sithole, Zimbabwean journalist and community organiser;

Blessing-Miles Tendi, author of Making History in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: Politics, Intellectuals and the Media;

George Shire, cultural theorist, political analyst and reviews editor for “Soundings”, a journal of politics and culture.

Rottweiler or poodle? Good cop or bad cop? What is the best way for journalists to get a good interview?

We will joined by:

Interviewer, film analyst, writer, mentor to screenwriters and conversationalist Warren Etheredge to discuss his thought-provoking ideas and tips about interviewing and his assertion that a great interview needs more than tough questioning;

Adam Boulton, political editor of Sky News.

Razia Iqbal, special correspondent and presenter, BBC News.

Chaired by presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House, Paddy O’Connell.

You can watch a video of Warren Etheredge speaking on the Art of the Interview here.

We will be joined by experts on the region and journalists fresh from reporting the remarkable events in Egypt to discuss the nature of the protests and what lies ahead for the country.

With the constitution suspended, parliament dissolved and power is in the hands of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, can the people’s hope of Democracy be fulfilled?

What inspiration will people in other countries in the Middle East take from the fact that Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and the Egyptian president have both been forced to step down?

Join us as we discuss the prospects for democracy throughout the region.

Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.

With:

Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor for Channel 4 News;

Dr Omar Ashour, lecturer in Middle East politics and the director of the MA in Middle East Studies Program at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, author of The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements and a pro-democracy activist close to the youth movement in Cairo;

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor at the Observer;

Dr Maha Azzam, Associate Fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House;

Ahdaf Soueif, political and cultural commentator and author of the bestselling The Map of Love which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1999 (via Skype from Cairo).

But are journalists equipped to understand the nature of these protests, what drives them and how they are organised?

What can we learn from recent protests about the likely nature of future protest, the role of social media and political allegiances? Are there any lessons to be learnt from the past that can help the media adapt to the new politics?

Join us at the Frontline Club for a fascinating discussion in association with the BBC College of Journalism.

Chaired by Steve Crawshaw, international advocacy director, Amnesty International and co-author of Small Acts of Resistance How courage, tenacity and ingenuity can change the world.

With:

Paul Mason, BBC Newsnight economics editor;

Guy Aitchison, co-editor of openDemocracy’s UK blog, OurKingdom, a PhD student in politics at UCL who was involved full-time in the occupation and a co-editor of Fightback: A reader on the winter of protest (a free downloadable e-book)

Turi Munthe, CEO of Demotix;

Jacky Rowland, Aljazeera English correspondent based in Paris.

Following unrest in a number of North African and Middle East countries, the world’s attention is now on Egypt, where the next 48 hours are considered crucial in determining the future of this pivotal country.

We hope you will join us to discuss the remarkable events of recent weeks and on the nature of the changes that are taking place in Egypt and what they mean for the future of the region.

Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.

With:

Mustafa Abulhimal, Research Fellow, Quilliam Foundation;

Jane Kinninmont, the associate director for Middle East and Africa at the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU);

Tarek Osman, author of Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak (via Skype, subject to internet connection in Cairo);

Mohamed Yehia, BBC Arabic Online Editor;

Davis Lewin, head of programmes at the Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank based in London.

Cartoonist Martin Rowson will be speaking at the Club in his own entertaining fashion about the power of satire, how he uses cartoons to create acerbic critiques of the world of politics and politicians and explaining how he goes about his work.

Rowson has colourfully caricatured the political climate since 1982. His recent depictions of Nick Clegg as Pinnochio have brought him praise and awards (including Political Cartoonist of the Year 2010). In 2001 Ken Livingstone appointed him London’s first Cartoonist Laureate in exchange for one pint of London Pride per annum. This payment is still six pints in arrears, and despite being apparently reappointed by Boris Johnson, not a single pint has been forthcoming from the current mayor.

Rowson’s work has appeared regularly in The Guardian, The Times, The Independent on Sunday, The Daily Mirror, The Spectator, The New Statesman, Tribune and The Morning Star, as well as many other publications. He has penned comic books, a novel Snatches and a memoir Stuff.

Rowson won the Cartoon Art Trust’s Political Cartoonist of the Year Award in 2000 and 2004, and the Political Cartoon Society’s Cartoon of the Year in 2003 and 2007. He also won the prestigious Premio Satiri de Forte di Marmi International Satire Award in 2006.

Laurie Taylor, who will moderate the event, is a sociologist and broadcaster. He regularly presents Thinking Allowed on BBC Radio 4 and is the commissioning editor for New Humanist.

Extensive humanitarian disasters attract a large amount of media attention whilst smaller and on going disasters often go unreported. Should the media be more receptive to aid agencies that try to bring attention to these causes? Or should aid agencies be more PR driven and utilise new media in order to attract the media spotlight?

Chaired by Mark Galloway, director of the International Broadcasting Trust an educational and media charity which works on a range of projects to promote media coverage of the developing world.

With:

Andrew Hogg, Christian Aid news/campaigns editor and former news editor of the Sunday Times and Observer and was editor of The Sunday Times Insight investigative unit;

Benjamin Chesterton, radio documentary and photofilm producer, co-founder of the production company duckrabbit and the website A Developing Story;

Fran Unsworth, head of BBC newsgathering;

Independent writer and consultant, Michael Green who was director of communications at DFID from 2003 to 2007 and co-author of Philanthrocapitalism and The Road From Ruin.

“Orphans are Africa’s tsunami” claims photographer Carol Allen Storey, who has documented the lives of orphans in Sub Saharan Africa.

Two key groups of children provide a focal point for her work. One, a gang of Ugandan youngsters known as the ‘Dustbin tribe’ who live and play on a rubbish tip, the other, lucky enough to be in school in Tanzania, are marked out from their classmates with red badges to signify their HIV positive status.

Carol Allen Storey is a committed photojournalist who specialises in chronicling complex humanitarian and social issues, especially amongst women and children.

Storey’s work has been exhibited and published internationally. She was a finalist in the Taylor Wessing Portrait Awards at the National Portrait Gallery, a finalist at the New York Photography Festival, and a finalist in the Spider Awards. In 2008 she was selected for the Press Photographer’s Year exhibition. She has showcased three solo exhibitions in London: Anything is Possible at the AOP, The Vanishing Assets of Africa at Inmarsat Gallery, and The savagery and poetry of Africa at Proud Gallery. In 2009 she was appointed a UNICEF ambassador.

Sue Steward will act as moderator for the event. Steward is a writer, radio broadcaster, photo-editor and curator who specialises in visual arts and world music. She is Photography Critic for The Evening Standard and for BBC Radio 2’s Arts Magazine with Claudia Winkleman, as well as a regular critic on the Radio 3’s World Routes programme. She is a founder member of the (Sony) World Photography Awards, a Trustee for the charity PhotoVoice, and a member of the Steering Committee for the March 2011 FORMAT International Photography Festival in Derby. In addition, she is a contributor to the British Journal of Photography and Eye magazine, and a feature writer for the Daily Telegraph and Observer.

The forty four years he spent behind bars form an extraordinary story through decades of racial unrest and monumental change, of how Rideau overcame insurmountable odds to redeem himself and to later be described as ‘the most rehabilitated prisoner in the country’.

He went on to edit the prison news magazine The Angolite the first prison publication to be nominated for a National Magazine Award. It was nominated seven times under his editorship. He also co-directed the documentary The Farm, which was nominated for an Oscar. He worked with prisoners and officers to improve the lives of his fellow inmates, lecturing and co-writing a prison text book on how to manage prisoners and meeting with disadvantaged groups to speak about prison life. Yet in spite of his tremendous efforts Rideau remained behind bars, whereas many with longer prison sentences and worse prison records were released sooner.

With the help of his wife Linda Labranche, Rideau’s murder conviction was reversed a third time in 2000 and he was found guilty of a lesser charge of manslaughter in January 2005. Award winning journalist Wilbert Rideau will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with Afua Hirsch, the Guardian’s legal affairs correspondent to recount his extraordinary story and the work he now does educating people about the realities of the world behind bars.

For the first On the Media discussion of the year we are going to be putting the spotlight on the media and asking what the WikiLeaks operation and the media coverage of it tells us about the press.

How have journalists responded to this new kid on the block? The future will no doubt see the emergence of similar organisations, but what impact will this have on the culture of journalism? How will the media adapt and how will this currently uncomfortable relationship develop?

Chaired by Richard Gizbert, presenter of The Listening Post on Al Jazeera English.

David Aaronovitch, writer, broadcaster, commentator and regular columnist for The Times;

Mark Stephens, media lawyer with Finers Stephens Innocent and Julian Assange’s solicitor;

Ian Katz, deputy editor of the Guardian;

Gavin MacFayden, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism.

In association with the BBC College of Journalism.

Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House will be hosting our First Wednesday discussion of the year. With an expert panel we will be examining how the operation works.

Where is it geographically strongest? What form does the organisation take and what tactics does it employ? How has it evolved and how will it evolve in the future?

To address these questions, joining us will be:

Dr Maha Azzam, Associate Fellow, Chatham House.

Investigative journalist and Al-Qaeda expert Camille Tawil. Tawil has covered Islamic militant groups for Al-Hayat Arabic daily in London since the early 1990s and is the author of The Armed Islamic Movement in Algeria - from the FIS to the GIA and Brothers in Arms - the Story of al-Qaeda and the Arab jihadists.

Deepak Tripathi, historian, journalist, researcher and author of Breeding Ground: Afghanistan and the Origins of Islamist Terrorism and Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Noman Benotman, a senior analyst at Quilliam. He was previously a leader of the jihadist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and an associate of senior al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan. In September 2010, he published an open letter to his former colleague Osama bin Laden calling on him to abandon violence.

Join us in the New Year for a lively public meeting which will mix the views of the experts and commentators with contributions from our audience.

As in his book My Friend the Mercenary Brabazon will be recalling how his unlikely friendship with Nick du Toit came into being on the bloody battlefields of the Liberian civil war and how this led to him becoming involved in the 2004 attempted overthrow of the government of Equatorial Guinea.

James Brabazon will be in conversation with Andrew Mueller, rock critic, travel writer, foreign correspondent, columnist and author.

Since 1965 Mort Rosenblum has covered war and peace on seven continents: civil strife, velvet revolution, climate chaos, and everything in between. As Associated Press special correspondent, he’s been shot at, locked up, lied to and shaken down. He ran AP bureaus in the Congo, West Africa, Southeast Asia, Argentina, and France. As editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris, Rosenblum dispatched correspondents and decided what made news. Now, in vivid detail, he explains what he learned the hard way in this gem of a guide to global reporting.

“This is the manual I wish I’d had back in the 1960s when I was dropped into the Congolese mayhem, clueless, sleepless, and scared witless,” Rosenblum writes. “It’s also the primer I wish people backhome could have had at hand to understand what they were reading and watching.”

Rosenblum will be joining us to look back on the last forty years that form the lessons and stories of Little Bunch of Madmen. He will be joined on stage by celebrated foreign correspondent Jon Swain, the discussion will be chaired by author and broadcaster Tom Fenton. If you are a young aspiring journalist this is an event and a book not to be missed.

This event is part of our monthly On the Media series, produced in association with the BBC College of Journalism.

She will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with special correspondent and presenter for BBC News, Razia Iqbal, to tell her story and the stories of the women and children in the eastern part of Congo that she now dedicates herself to helping.

Chishugi grew up in eastern Congo but moved to Kigali the Rwandan capital at the age of sixteen to work as a model, she married and had a son. But just three years later she found herself caught up in the massacre that claimed over 800,000 lives. She escaped only after being left for dead under a pile of corpses.

Contrary to what the world hoped Obama symbolised; redemption of a racist history, the overcoming of adversity, and the hope of a better, fairer future. Ali argues the wind that drove Obama into the White House was really the immaculate symbiosis of big money and big politics.

In this dissection of Obama’s overseas escalation and domestic retreat, renowned author, filmmaker and international commentator Tariq Ali asks how the American empire has changed since Obama took control, with military activity in the Middle East more prevalent than during the Bush Era. The hopes aroused during Obama’s election campaign have rapidly receded: Obama’s failures are paving the way for a Republican surge, while his own supporters become increasingly despondent.

Following the failed attempt this weekend to plant bombs on cargo planes destined for the US, we will be discussing Yemen, its politics and the response of the US to this latest terrorist threat.

Another opportunity to join in a lively public meeting, hosted by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House, bringing together experts and commentators and mixing their views with contributions from our audience.

With:

Felicity Spector, chief writer and American politics expert for Channel 4 News;

Dr Thomas D. Grant, chair of Republicans Abroad UK;

Bill Barnard, chair of Democrats Abroad UK;

Abdallah Homouda, Journalist and Yemen specialist;

Ginny Hill, Journalist, Yemen expert and author of Chatham House briefing paper, Yemen: Fear of Failure;

James Brandon, head of research at Quilliam, former journalist who lived in Yemen in 2002 and 2004/5 and worked on both Yemen’s English language newspapers;

Tom Finn, freelance journalist, currently working as a copy editor for the Yemen Times in Sana’a (via online link up).

In Dispatches from the Dark Side Peirce demonstrates how the British government has colluded with the US in a range of unlawful activities; rendition, internment without trial, torture. How it has gone to extraordinary lengths to hide its actions, its devices for maintaining secrecy being more deep-rooted than those of any other comparable democracy.  She states that unless the British government can urgently put into reverse its present course, it will have destroyed much of the moral and legal fabric it claims to be protecting.

Exploring the fate of men interned without trial, the subjects of house arrest, extraditees and deportees. Peirce argues that their cases demonstrate a deeply entrenched culture of impunity among those pursuing the West’s new suspect community. She recalls Britain’s crackdown on Irish nationalism and asks if in its prosecution of the ‘War on Terror’, has the West repeated the fatal errors of the Irish conflict, with young Muslims taking the place of innocent Irish men and women?

The government has signalled its intention to retarget a large porportion of the budget to achieving stability in Afghanistan, but is there a danger that the line between development aid and military intervention becomes increasingly blurred?  What will be the impact of cut backs in aid to countries such as India, China and Russia?

Join us at the Frontline Club with an expert panel to discuss the coalition government’s shake up of the international development budget and if they have their priorities in the right places.

Chaired by Humphrey Hawksley, leading BBC foreign correspondent, author and commentator on world affairs.

With:

Michael Anderson, DFID director general for policy and global issues;

Dorcas Erskine, ActionAid head of public affairs;

Samir Elhawary, ODI Research Fellow, currently researching the evolving role of humanitarian action in conflict-affected emergencies, with a particular focus on the interface between humanitarianism and politics;

Paul Ackroyd, International Development Consultant.

From his “ringside seat” as economics editor Paul Mason’s book Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed is a blow by blow account that begins with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the bailout package of October 2008, seeking to explain how we got there.

In an updated edition Paul Mason explores the impact of this development on capitalist ideology and politics. We are delighted that Sir David Hare who carried out meticulous research for his play on the financial crisis will be with us to discuss the events of 2008 and seek to make sense of the state of capitalism today.

Chaired by Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News correspondent.

In the mid-nineties however, he took a break from war reporting. For five months he lived, slept and worked in a tunnel underneath Manhattan’s well-heeled Upper West Side. He lived alongside an eclectic mix of outsiders: Vietnam veterans, hippies, crack addicts, Cuban refugees, convicted killers, computer programmers, philosophical recluses and criminal runaways. His book on this community, Tunnel People was originally published in the Netherlands in 1996 and widely acclaimed for its anthropological and journalistic merits.

Recently Voeten went back to find his former co-inhabitants of New York’s Tunnels. In this updated version of Tunnel People, Voeten describes what has happened in the thirteen years since they were evicted from the tunnels and offered alternative housing by Amtrak. Hot on the heals of his New York book launch, Voeten will be at the Frontline Club to discuss his career and his experience of living underground in Manhattan.

Moderated by Colin Jacobson

The void it left was soon filled by a new security service, the FSB, which has accumulated powerful backers and increasing authority ever since. This agency has become, in the words of former FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev, Russia’s “new nobility.” Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, co-founders of the secret services watchdog website Agentura.ru, will be speaking at the Frontline Club about their book The New Nobility which investigates Russia’s powerful and shadowy security and intelligence services.

Soldatov and Borogan worked for Novaya Gazeta from January 2006 to November 2008. Agentura.ru has been reported on and featured in the New York Times, the Moscow Times, the Washington Post, Online Journalism Review, Le Monde, the Christian Science Monitor, CNN, the Federation of American Scientists, and the BBC.

This event will be moderated by Susan Richards, a non-executive director and founder of Open Democracy. She is the author of two books on Russia and a specialist on Russian affairs.

– Peter Horrocks, BBC director of global news

– Ben Cohen, Channel 4 News technology correspondent

– Greg Beitchman, global editor of the Reuters news agency

– Simon Bucks, associate editor at Sky News.

Chaired by Matt Wells, head of audio at the Guardian, and presenter of the Media Talk podcast.

There is much talk of Old Media platforms of news print and TV being wiped out by digital platforms. But TV is still world’s most dominant communication medium and is growing year on year - TV journalism now reaches more millions of people around the world than ever before.

The BBC sells its news channels across the world to more clients than ever before; new broadcasters like al Jazeera and France 24 have set up operations across the globe and in multiple languages and the internet offers new ways for video journalism to be produced quickly and cheaply.

So with TV entering its own digitally-connected, multi-platform future, this Frontline panel asks: is this the real golden age of TV news?

Long-suppressed LIFE magazine pictures of the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be the focus of John G. Morris’ discussion at the Frontline Club about what, if anything, we have learned from images of war.

Alexander Lindsay, a one-time student of Morris, now a successful filmmaker, will moderate the event. Lindsay made the film Afgan during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which is believed to be the only film by a Western crew with the Soviet forces in combat, and covered both Gulf wars from Iraq. He has since spent five years filming the wreck of the Titanic, creating the largest images of the shipwreck ever made.

If Kim Jong-il is paving the way for a handover of power to a third generation of his faimily, what does this mean for the future of the communist dynasty and its economic and foreign polices?

With so much of what goes on inside North Korea veiled in secrecy we will be discussing what recent developments mean for North Korea and its relationships with its neighbours and the world beyond.

With North Korea’s nuclear threat said to have reached an “alarming level” we will turn to the issue of nuclear proliferation and assess the dangers posed not only by North Korea, but also Libya Iran and the South Asia region. An opportunity to ask questions and discuss with experts.

With:

Aidan Foster-Carter, Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea at Leeds University;

Charles Scanlon, BBC correspondent in Japan and South Korea from 2000 to 2007, currently an editor at BBC World Service news;

Tim Tate, investigative journalist and film maker, director of Dirty Little Secrets;

Mark Fitzpatrick, director of Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at International Institute for Strategic Studies;

The man who had been feted by world leaders at the height of his powers as Serbian President in 1995 was forced out of office amid street protests and a general strike after losing the September 2000 election and later faced trial in the Hague for war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo.

Ten years after the October 5th revolution we will be bringing together journalists, fillmmakers and experts who were there to discuss these remarkable events and their impact. What was the legacy of the former President who died in his cell in 2006?

Chaired by Bill Neely, International Editor for ITV News.

With:

Steve Crawshaw, international advocacy director, Amnesty International and co-author of Small Acts of Resistance How courage, tenacity and ingenuity can change the world;

Norma Percy, co-executive producer (with Brian Lapping) of the BBC series, The Fall of Milosevic;

Allan Little, BBC News special correspondent and programme presenter;

Maggie O’Kane, editorial director of GuardianFilms and former foreign correspondent with the newspaper, she has covered most of the world’s major conflicts over the last decade.

Managing large amounts of data is one of the key skills of the modern, digitally-minded journalist. So how do top data-driven journalists collate, analyse and present vast amounts of facts and figures into interactive graphics, searchable databases and fascinating charts.

Experts confirmed so far include:

– Simon Rogers, news editor (data) at The Guardian and editor of Guardian.co.uk’s Datablog. Simon played a key role in turning some of the 90,000 documents given to Wikileaks into graphics and interactive charts. Read this fascinating article by Simon on how he did it.

– David McCandless, writer, designer and author of Information is Beautiful, which “explores the potential of data visualisation as a new direction for journalist and story-telling.”

– Julian Burgess, programmer and editorial developer at The Times, who will talk about using data in a practical newsroom environment and how journalists can add a real-time dimension to their work.

– Michael Blastland, journalist and creator of BBC Radio 4’s More or Less programme. Michael will talk about how to use official sources and data and make sure you’re getting the real story behind the figures.

What are the prospects of the Democrats losing their Senate majority altogether after the 2 November polls? What impact will it have on the remainder of President Obama’s term in office if his party loses control of the legislative branch to the Republicans?

Join us at the Frontline Club where we will be looking ahead to the midterm elections and the next two years for President Obama’s in the White House with congressional scholar, Professor Thomas Mann, an expert on campaigns, elections and the effectiveness of Congress.

Chaired by Michael Goldfarb, London correspondent for globalpost.com

With:

Bill Barnard, chair of Democrats Abroad UK;

Dr Thomas D. Grant, chair of Republicans Abroad UK;

Professor Robert McKeever, Dean of the Faculty of Law Governance and International Relations, London Metropolitan University, and author of Raw Judicial Power? The Supreme Court and American Society, The United States Supreme Court: A Political and Legal Analysis and lead author of (with Professor Philip Davies) of the major textbook Politics USA: third edition due out in 2011.

As the formal UN Review Meeting of the Millennium Development Goals approaches, join us at the Frontline Club discuss the impact of climate change on them being realised.

At this third and final event in a series in association with Communications INC we will also be discussing whether climate change rights violations can be remedied in courts of law and if human rights principles should be put at the heart of international climate change policy.

Chaired by Julian Rush, Channel 4 News science correspondent

With:

Lawrence McGinty, health and science editor ITV news

Colm Ó Cuanacháin, Senior Director of Campaigns at Amnesty International

Christoph Schwarte, Staff Lawyer, Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD)

Marine Destrez, researcher at Leadership for Environment and Development International (LEAD)

Documentography is a group of photographers who collaborate internationally covering documentary, reportage, portraiture and fine art. Since 2000 this collection of five very different and equally talented photographers has worked together to promote their work and share their success. They combine forces to produce a quarterly web magazine, ISSUE.

Two members of Documentography, Guilhem Alandry and Anna Kåri, will be at the Frontline Club to discuss their collective and their varied techniques, including their innovative joint project about a shanty town built on a rubbish tip in Sierra Leone commissioned by Save the Children.

The event will be moderated by Jennifer Pollard, a Senior Lecturer in History & Theory of Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at London College of Communication. She specialises in the history of photojournalism and documentary, trauma, and globalized visual culture.