Balkan Investigative Reporting Network
Lada Vucenovic joined the BIRN Serbia team in January 2010.
As project coordinator, she handles all operational and project matters in the field of media policy and good governance, and also works as a researcher.
She graduated from Faculty of Organizational Sciences at the University of Belgrade, where she majored in marketing management and public relations. Before joining BIRN, she volunteered at several different organisations: Executive Group, ABS Holdings and Group for Security (G4S).
Bob is a seasoned media veteran and Executive Director of World 50 Group, where he oversees content, programming and product strategy for the company.
He also founded Tiny World Media, through which he has served in principal executive roles for media startups including CB Insights and News Deeply, Inc.; as strategic advisor to The Economist, TechCrunch and Engadget; and senior media advisor to the North Macedonia Strategic Initiative. Prior to this he served as general manager of Washington Post Live, founded the Bloomberg Link division of Bloomberg L.P., held executive positions at Fortune Magazine and was vice president/general manager of the trade show giant, Softbank Comdex. He is a public speaker and writer. His work has won numerous media industry awards in the U.S. and abroad.
Having done business in 25 countries, with a specialization in China, India, Southeast Asia and Mexico, Bob’s career spans the globe. He has served on the board of the Metropolitan Opera Guild in New York City, currently serves on the board of North Macedonia-based Pikasa Analytics and is a member of the Assembly for BIRN Hub (Balkan Investigative Reporting Network).
Azra joined BIRN Hub in August 2014 as a Finance Assistant. In 2017, she became a Financial Officer.
She is based in BIRN Hub’s Sarajevo office. Her responsibilities include helping with financial reports, assisting in the calculation of taxes, assisting with payments, receiving payment orders from the program staff and checking their correctness, communication with project managers and project coordinators, overview of the use of cash resources and creation of cash registers, monitoring project spending on a monthly basis, assisting with end of year preparation and procedures and any other duties that may be deemed appropriate to this role.
Her previous working experience includes working as accounting assistant in Altermedia d.o.o. Sarajevo.
In 2013, she graduated from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Sarajevo. Her major was Macro-financial Management. In 2022, she enrolled in a Master’s Degree at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Sarajevo, where she completed all the exams.
Along with her native Bosnian, she speaks English
Tamara Chausidis is experienced editor and media freedom activist.
In 2014, she started to work as an editor for the website Prizma.mk, the main online publication of BIRN Macedonia. Before joining BIRN, she worked as an editor for Macedonian Radio-Radio Skopje, Radio Free Europe and TV ALSAT-M.
Jasna has worked at BIRN Macedonia since January 2016.
She has extensive experience in civil society in Macedonia. Prior to joining BIRN, she was leading a project for strengthening independent media at the Media Development Centre in Skopje. She has served as member committee president of AIESEC Macedonia and has also worked for DHL in Germany. She holds a BA in Accounting and Auditing from the Faculty of Economics at the Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje.
Labinot has monitored court sessions for BIRN Kosovo for almost two years.
He graduated in law, and completed his master’s on commercial contracts.
She joined the BIRN team in 2014 and is responsible for both finance and administration jobs, producing finance reports, processing invoices and daily track of daily revenue and spending.
In addition, she is managing the daily functioning of BIRN Hub’s Belgrade office.
Snezana has been working in finance administration for almost 20 years. She speaks Serbian and Macedonian.
Nikola joined BIRN Hub in May 2015 as an Administration and Operations Assistant. He is based in BIRN Hub’s Sarajevo office and provides support to the regional operations. His main responsibilities include regular financial analysis of project costs and a vast range of key administrative duties. At the start of 2018, he became a part of the BIRN Hub’s HR department. From October 2022 he is acting as a Finance and Operations Manager.
Previously, he worked in the governmental and NGO sectors and has extensive experience in administration, financial and operational work.He worked at Caritas as the head of finance/accountants and was responsible for accounting and financial operations. During this period, he also gained valuable experience in office management and project operations.
Nikola studied Economics at University of Sarajevo, where his major was International Economy. In addition to his formal education, Nikola has attended various project related and HR courses and seminars.
Along with his native Bosnian and Macedonian, he speaks English.
Marcus Tanner is Editor at Balkan Insight
Marcus studied theology at Cambridge before becoming the Balkans correspondent for The Independent from 1988 to 1994.
He returned to London to become the Assistant Foreign Editor of The Independent from 1996 to 2000 before leaving to write books on Ireland and on the Celts and to work briefly in Kyrgyzstan.
He has worked full time for Balkan Insight since 2006, while continuing to write leader-page articles twice a month for The Independent.
His published books are: “Ticket to Latvia”, Dent & Weidenfeld, “Croatia, a Nation Forged in War”, “Ireland’s Holy Wars”, “The Last of the Celts” and “The Raven King, Matthias Corvinus and the Fate of His Lost Library”, all published by Yale University Press.
He edited Marija Mestrovic’s “Ivan Mestrovic, The making of a Master”, published by Stacey International. He lives in London.
Lamija joined Detektor (BIRN BiH) in January 2014 as a web archive assistant and intern. As of January 2015, she is working as a journalist for Detektor.
For the past decade she has been investigating topics related to war crimes, transitional justice, genocide denial, terrorism and hate crimes. She has been reporting about war crime trials from Bosnia’s State Court, local courts as well as the Hague Tribunal. On numerous occasions she has been a lecturer on topics she is familiar with.
Lamija is the author of a documentary, Samir Mehic Bowie – Letters from Srebrenica, and was the journalist and the interviewer on the project The Lives Behind the Fields of Death, which filmed more than 100 testimonies from surviving witnesses of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.
She is also the co-author of the practical handbook Media reporting on persons missing due to 1992-1995 conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In 2023, she and Dzana Brkanic were awarded second prize in the European Union Investigative Journalism Awards for an investigation into court verdicts over the past ten years for hate crimes. She was a member of BIRN BiH newsroom when it was awarded the European Press Prize Special Award in 2020 “for its reporting on war crimes trials, transitional justice issues and the problems faced by victims of the 1990s conflict”. She was shortlisted for the Srdjan Aleksic award in 2022 for “contribution to the community”.
Lamija is the co-scriptwriter of the first Bosnian PC adventure game, Searching for the treasure of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which promotes the cultural and historical heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This game is the product of a UNICEF campaign within the MDGF Culture for Development programme implemented in partnership with UNDP and UNESCO.
She was awarded the literary “Fra Grgo Martic” awards by the foundation bearing that name for the best debut prose book of 2009 in Bosnia.
Lamija graduated in Journalism from the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Sarajevo. Apart from Bosnian, her mother tongue, she speaks English and Norwegian.
