Webinar Climate, Trauma and Journalism 

Together with Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma Europe (DCE), Journalismfund.eu is hosting two webinars on climate crisis reporting, trauma and journalism. Two online seminars (17.02.2023 and 24.02.2023) to build resilience and impact for sustainable reporting on the climate crisis.

The sessions bring together leading experts to discuss the psychological impact of the climate crisis and how it affects interviewees (survivors) and journalists who cover such stories as well as audiences. 

The first workshop will give tips on how journalists can interact ethically with interviewees who have been affected by the climate crisis and move on to how journalists can build their own resilience when working on such stories.  

In the second workshop we will discuss ways in which the traumatic content of climate related stories may affect audiences and what journalists should know about the psychological impact of climate stories in order to produce more impact through their reporting. 

In combination, the two workshops will aim to make climate-related journalism more ethical and resilient and to produce stories with greater awareness of their psychological impact.

FIRST SEMINAR: 17.2.2023  (12.00-13.30 CET)

Climate, Trauma and Journalism: ethical reporting and self-care for climate reporters.

Moderator: Juliana Ruhfus

Speakers: Ajit Niranjan, Dr. Patrick Kennedy-Williams, Sara Schurmann

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SECOND SEMINAR: 24.2.2023 (12.00-13.30 CET)

Climate, Trauma and Journalism: the psychological impact of the climate crisis and creating impactful stories

Moderator: Juliana Ruhfus

Speakers: Dr. Emma Lawrence, Maren Urner, Rima Ashour.

WHO ARE THE SPEAKERS?

Juliana Ruhfus is an award-winning broadcaster and investigative journalist who leads the European work of the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma. Having worked in international TV production for well over two decades (Al Jazeera, BBC, and many others) and with a background of in-depth reporting on pressing global issues (e.g. conflict, terrorism, trafficking) Juliana, a former Dart Centre Ochberg Fellow, trainer, and Dart Centre board member, now focuses on the expansion of Dart Centre Europe.

Rima Ashour has a Master’s Degree in Psychology from the University of Vienna. From 2002 to 2011 she worked as Research Assistant at Johannes Kepler University Linz, from 2011 to 2013 as Program Manager at the University of Mannheim, and from 2014 to 2020 in Quality Management and Diversity Management at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg. In 2019 she started her postgraduate training as Psychological Psychotherapist at the Institute for Behavioral Therapy, Behavioral Medicine and Sexuology (IVS) in Fuerth which has been her main occupation since 2021. Since 2019 she has been active as a volunteer for Psychologists/Psychotherapists for Future. She is a founding member of the regional group Nuremberg-Fuerth-Erlangen, talks, workshops, and counseling on coping with the climate crisis, support for activists, contributions to book publications and public relations work on issues related to “climate & psyche”.

Dr Emma Lawrance is the Mental Health Lead at the Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI), Imperial College London. She leads the Climate Cares program, working with researchers, designers and policy experts to better understand and respond to the deep interconnections between climate change and mental health, for the communities of a safer climate future. Other work focusses on digital mental health, in collaboration with Shout crisis text line, and youth mental health. She completed her MSc and DPhil in computational and clinical neuroscience at the University of Oxford. She also holds a BSc(Hons) in physics and chemistry from Flinders University, and a science communication graduate diploma from the Australian National University. She is the Chair of Trustees and Founder of youth mental health charity It Gets Brighter. She loves spending time in the natural world, particularly her homeland of the Adelaide hills, and on a bike.

Maren Urner is a neuroscientist and professor of media psychology at the HMKW Hochschule for Media, Communications und Economy in Cologne. She studied cognitive and neuroscience, among others at McGill University in Montreal, and received her PhD from University College London. In 2016, she co-founded the first ad-free online magazine "Perspective Daily" for constructive journalism. She led the editorial team as editor-in-chief until March 2019 and served as managing editor. Her two books "Schluss mit dem täglichen Weltuntergang" (Droemer 2019) and "Raus aus der ewigen Dauerkrise" (Droemer 2021) are SPIEGEL bestsellers.

Ajit Niranjan is a multimedia reporter mainly working for Deutsche Welle, Germany's international public broadcaster, covering climate change. He has previously made radio reports for the BBC World Service, visualized data for the Financial Times, and written for The Guardian, The Economist and The New Statesman.

Patrick Kennedy-Williams is a leading expert in the field of climate change-related mental health. He holds a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of Oxford and is the co-director of Climate Psychologists, an independent organisation providing therapeutic support and wider consultation regarding the mental health implications of climate change. Patrick has collaborated with local and national governments, businesses, and educators on community-based initiatives for climate anxiety and fostering people-centred and sustainable change towards net-zero. Patrick is an advisory board member for Climate Cares, Imperial College London.

Sara Schurmann is a German freelance journalist and trainer. Among others she worked as executive editor, chief copy editor and consultant for the German publications Tagesspiegel, VICE, Gruner + Jahr, Zeit Online, funk and SWR. In 2018, Medium Magazin chose her as one of its Top 30 under 30, in 2022 she was selected as science journalist of the year. 2020 Schurmann published an open letter to her colleagues asking journalists to take the climate crisis seriously, 2021 she co-founded the Climate Journalism Network Germany. In 2022 her first book „Klartext Klima“ was published.

Watch the webinar