Event Details

At this event Domonique Davies, the niece of journalist Dom Phillips, and Mexico-based journalist John Gibler will speak to the work of investigative journalists who become targets of violence because of their work.

Investigative journalists are important cross-cultural mediators and translators. Together with local communities and activists, they are usually the first to pick up on instances of state violence, the activities of organized crime, the abuse of power, or the violation of Human, social and cultural rights. In their publications, Journalists ‘translate’ these – often extremely complex – issues across continents; for example, from Latin America for readers and viewers in the Anglophone North.

Investigative journalists often become targets of violence, such as threats, intimidation, manufactured criminal charges, or assassination. Often, little is done to protect them or to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Dom Phillips, an investigative journalist working for The Guardian among others, was murdered in June 2022 in the Amazon, together with local expert Bruno Pereira. During his investigations, he uncovered networks of organized crime that endangered the Amazon rainforest. Domonique Davies will speak to her uncle’s work, to the family’s ongoing campaign for justice, and to the social movements that Dom Phillips had worked with.

John Gibler is an independent journalist based in Mexico. He is the author of I Couldn't Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us: An Oral History of the Attacks Against the Students of Ayotzinapa (City Lights, 2017) and Torn from the World: A Guerrilla’s Escape from a Secret Prison in Mexico (City Lights, 2018) and To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from the Drug War (City Lights, 2011) among other books. He is specialized in long-read investigative reporting and has recently published on the current state of exception in El Salvador and on the Mexican government’s thwarting of the investigation into the enforced disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students. He was interviewed by Kate Doyle from the National Security Archive: Kate Doyle Interviews Journalist John Gibler Ahead of Episode 2 Release of "After Ayotzinapa" | National Security Archive (gwu.edu). He has also written on the murder of Berta Cáceres: The Many Murders of Berta Cáceres | Sierra Club.

John Gibler will join us online.

Delphine Nkeke Epse Ajibade Oluseun, PhD candidate at the Department of Languages and Cultures and a journalist and translator from Cameroon, will act as initial respondent to the speakers.

The event is funded by the Society for Latin American Studies.

Please consider visiting the exhibition ‘For Dom, Bruno and the Amazon’, which is on display at The Roundhouse until 25th January 2024.