I am a writer, editor, and media development consultant. I work with journalists in the Balkans and the Middle East, specialising in long-form and investigative stories.
Our output has been widely re-published in the international press – including The Guardian, New Statesman, The Atlantic, and The Independent.
It has twice been shortlisted for the European Press Prize, in the Investigative Reporting and Innovation categories. The judges said the editing was “outstanding”. Another award, the Reporting Europe Prize, was given in 2013 for a story that I edited.
I lived in Iraq from 2008-10, producing news, analysis and long-form with a bureau of local journalists. Our work was the subject of a short film about new reporting techniques in conflict zones. The film was featured in a discussion at London’s Frontline Club about the changing role of local journalists. In my spare time, I reported on Iraqi bomb-disposal experts for Vanity Fair and on the Iraqi police’s fight against insurgents for the Financial Times Weekend magazine.
I began my journalism career with the BBC, and spent five years there. I reported on the legacy of Bosnia’s jihadis for Radio Four’s From Our Own Correspondent programme, and on the aftermath of an earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir. I tracked down a group of Chinese Uighur men who had been deported to Albania after being held without charge by the US military at Guantanamo Bay – a process I called “extraordinary rehabilitation”. I met Chechen refugees and former fighters in the Caucasus, and I’ve crossed the “frozen” frontline between South Ossetia and Georgia. Based in the BBC’s London headquarters, I was a writer for BBC News website’s World News page, and a producer for flagship radio and TV news programmes. I was born in New Delhi, went to a state school in Oxford and graduated with a 2.1 in English literature from Cambridge University. Before entering journalism, I worked as a waiter, a tour guide, a marketer for a law firm, and as a cycle courier delivering sandwiches to office workers in London.
You can contact me privately using the form below.
Neil Arun 