About our guests
Taha Siddiqui
Taha Siddiqui is a Pakistani investigative journalist living in exile in France since 2018. He founded the DISSIDENT club, a bar in Paris where dissidents of the world meet. He also teaches at SciencesPo Paris and continues to write for several international newspapers. In Pakistan, he has been a correspondent for several international media, including the New York Times, the Guardian and France24. In 2014, he was awarded the Albert Londres Prize for his work on The Polio War. He had to flee Pakistan after surviving an assassination attempt allegedly carried out by the country's army secret service in order to end his investigative reporting.
Fiona O’Brien
Fiona O’Brien has been the UK Director of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) since 2023. After starting her career on a local paper, she joined Reuters as a correspondent, taking postings in Nairobi, Baghdad and Beirut and covering conflicts including Iraq, Sudan and DRC. She worked for the United Nations in Khartoum, and taught journalism for many years at London’s Kingston University.
Zaina Erhaim
Zaina Erhaim is a Syrian journalist and a consultant in media and gender with different organisations across the MENA. She is the founder of Women Journalist Alliance that works to support and amplify the voices of women in journalism in the region. She works as a managing editor of Jeem which is a feminist Arabic website. Before working independently, Zaina was the communications manager for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Ms. Erhaim has a master’s degree in international journalism from City, University of London.
Daniel Gorman
Daniel Gorman joined English PEN as Director in August 2019. Prior to English PEN Daniel was Executive Director of Shubbak, Europe’s largest festival of contemporary Arab culture. Daniel is also a co-founder of Highlight Arts, who have organised UK-based international arts festivals and events since 2007 including projects working with writers in Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Daniel has written for the Guardian, Irish Times, N+1 and many others, and contributed an essay to the PEN supported volume Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline (Saqi Books, 2014). Daniel is a National Arts Strategies ‘CEO Community and Culture’ 2015 fellow and a British Council Cultural Leadership International fellow.
About the partners
English PEN
English PEN is one of the world's oldest human rights organisations, championing the freedom to write and read. We are the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers’ association with 130 centres in more than 90 countries. With the support of our members – a community of readers, writers, and activists – we protect freedom of expression whenever it is under attack, support writers facing persecution around the world, and celebrate contemporary international writing with literary prizes, grants, events, and our online magazine PEN Transmissions.
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a global NGO which defends the right of every human being to have access to free and reliable information. Founded by four journalists in Montpellier in 1985, and now working in around 180 countries worldwide, we act for the freedom, pluralism and independence of journalism, and defend those who embody these ideals. Recognised as a public interest organisation in France since 1995, RSF has consultative status with the United Nations, UNESCO, the Council of Europe and the International Organization of Francophonie (OIF).
