At WITNESS Raja draws on over a decade of experience in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to assist communities and civil society groups using video and technology in their efforts to advance human rights and accountability throughout the region — and she works to ensure that innovative learning is shared and built upon.

Prior to joining WITNESS, Raja worked with not-for-profits in the United States and the Middle East, providing critical support in key areas like immigration, gender and minority rights, peace and stability and more. In 2011, she was in Yemen covering the revolution as a citizen journalist, media stringer and freelance photographer for international media.

Raja’s strengths lie in community mobilization, representation, capacity building, political analysis of the status of the Middle East, international human rights, and Islam.

One of Dartmouth’s first productions – The End of the Line (2009) - pioneered this genre of filmmaking. Recent films have included Josh Appignanesi’s My Extinction (2023), Edinburgh Film Festival selected Women Behind the Wheel (2022) and Bank Job (2021), which premiered at Hot Docs. Last year Dartmouth won the Big Screen Award for best documentary campaign of the year.

Christopher Hird is a former chair of the Sheffield DocFest, was the founding chair of Doc Society and served for six years as a trustee of the Grierson Trust. He is currently the chair of the Ethical Journalism Network and Picture People and is a trustee of the Wincott Foundation.

In addition, he is Professor for International Human Rights at the University of Vienna, where he is the scientific director of the Vienna Master of Arts in Human Rights and co-director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights. In October 2016, he was appointed as independent expert leading the UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty.

Aside from Vienna University, Manfred Nowak was Professor of International Law and Human Rights at various prestigious universities, such as Utrecht, Lund, Stanford and the Graduate Institute in Geneva, and has published more than 600 books and articles in this field, including various language editions of the CCPR-Commentary, a CAT-Commentary and an introduction to the International Human Rights Regime. He has carried out various expert functions for the UN, the Council of Europe, the EU and other inter-governmental organizations.

Most importantly, he served for many years in various functions as UN Expert on Enforced Disappearances (1993 to 2006), as one of eight international judges in the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo (1996 to 2003), and as UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (2004 to 2010).

From 2014 until 2020, he served as the CEO of the German section of Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Before that he worked for 15 years with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Kenya and Malaysia as well as at global HQ in Geneva.

Florian has a background in radio journalism and holds a Masters in International Policy from the University of Bristol and a BA in Economics and Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

As senior program and research manager of EngageMedia Egbert managed and co-edited the Video for Change Impact Toolkit, a guide for practitioners and activist to design and evaluate impact and create strategic outreach campaigns for their films.

After nearly two decades in Indonesia, Egbert recently moved to Newcastle, Australia with his family. Besides his work for EngageMedia, he is an Anthropology lecturer and PhD candidate at the University of Newcastle.