Dataharvest 2025 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference

In recent years, cross-border investigative projects have increasingly seen scientists and scholars not just as interviewees but as active collaborators throughout the investigative process. Such collaborations, while powerful, require careful design from the start. For example, scientists and journalists often have diverging agendas, timelines, and constraints. There is an inherent imbalance between scientific expertise and the ability of journalists to critically evaluate the validity of a specific scientific approach, leaving journalists reliant on scientists' judgment and at risk of losing control over the direction of the investigation. To address these and other challenges there is a need for structured guidelines, recommendations, and potentially a code of conduct to ensure independence, equity, and effective use of resources. In this networking session, the participants will discuss what those guidelines might look like and co-create a practical blueprint for fostering respectful and productive collaborations between journalists and scholars. The session's outcome will be a co-created roadmap of suggestions, insights, and practical recommendations.

Cross-border collaborative investigations are now an established practice in journalism, and the role of coordinator is gaining a clearer definition. Yes, many questions about the coordinator's role and work remain open, as each investigation is different and presents different challenges. While some organisations specialise in hosting and coordinating collaborative projects, there are also many cross-border investigations coordinated by individual journalists in an ad-hoc manner. In this session we'd like to consider the possibility of developing a cross-border editorial framework and mindset that would help us decide which topics to investigate from the beginning of a collaboration. We will look at ideas on how to best manage diverse, cross-border teams who have varying cultural and journalistic backgrounds; how to work remotely across different time zones with freelancers and staffers, newcomers and veterans, data journalists and writers. When it comes to publishing partners, how do you navigate the varying requirements of legacy media and independent newsrooms? Whether you have experience coordinating cross-border investigations or you'd like to get some experience in the field - join the discussion!

The Nerd Jam is all about showing each other our software projects, our exploratory scripts, or interesting use cases for established tools. It's a session to learn and be inspired by others who use code to wrangle data and support their work.

Join this session if you're comfortable with scripting or building software. The jam is all about building on each other's work, finding solutions to problems that stump us, and maybe even building collaborations to last beyond Dataharvest.

This event is only open to Dataharvest participants.

If you'll be joining us, fill out the form below with your name, email, and area of interest. Additionally, if you have short (< 15-minute) session ideas, please share them.

https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/zlj+KzpAsVJeC2jml0sj0HD5yRyzjxIxtqbJIA7cU6U/

Max 25 participants - FULL
Did you know that Mechelen played an important political and economic role in the fifteenth century, when the city was under the rule of the Dukes of Burgundy? Many historical buildings testify to this: St. Rumbold's Cathedral, the former palaces of Margaret of Austria and Margaret of York, the Palace of the Grand Council, etc. etc. The Historical City Walk now also takes in the newly discovered fourteenth-century wall paintings in St. John's Church. Follow your guide through historical Mechelen.

Max 25 participants - register here
This walk looks at the power of women and their influence on the city, from the highest ranks to the lowest, from the distant past through to the present day. Among other things, you will visit Margaret of Austria's palace and what are now the law courts. You will also be able to view the exterior of Margaret of York's palace, now the home of the municipal theatre.

Back by popular demand (yes, really!) The OSINT treasure hunt gives Dataharvesters a chance to have some fun, test their OSINT skills and lateral thinking, and get some fresh air on the streets of Mechelen. Either come as a team (3 is a good number) or find other team members at the beginning of the session.

In this session, we will share our best practices on helping participants in our courses to embrace data journalism. We'll present the results of the Crossborder Journalism Campus project, where two cohorts of 75 students from three journalism education institutions in Germany, France and Sweden collaborated on a European topic. We will also share examples of exercises, workshops, and assignments that data educators might use. The session is for practice-oriented journalism educators who want to share tips and be inspired by each other.

Use your coffee break to come and chat with our experts in one of the Dataharvest "cafes"!

Here you can ask experts' advice on security, fundraising or drafting a budget, obtaining documents from the EU (or investigating the EU in general), or help in coding. You’ll find these “cafes” in the main lobby area (Mediaforum, where coffee breaks and lunches take place on the ground floor). To locate the cafes, just look for roll-ups with the corresponding name!

Security cafe
Finance & Fundraising cafe
EU & FOI cafe

This informal session is intended to bring together journalists who use access to documents procedures within European Institutions and member states. It is the first (in person) meeting of the informal network of these journalists since it was launched at Dataharvest 2024, but it is open to all journalists and researchers with knowledge of the right to information & access to documents anywhere in Europe. During the meeting, we’ll exchange tips and best practices, and if there is interest, we will try to create, together, a knowledge repository that would identify and compile useful strategies, tactics, and sources for obtaining documents all over the EU.

Use your lunch break to come and chat with our experts in one of the Dataharvest "cafes"!

Here you can ask experts' advice on security, fundraising or drafting a budget, obtaining documents from the EU (or investigating the EU in general), or help in coding. You’ll find these “cafes” in the main lobby area (Mediaforum, where coffee breaks and lunches take place on the ground floor). To locate the cafes, just look for for roll-ups with the corresponding name!

Security cafe
Finance & Fundraising cafe
EU & FOI cafe

This informal session brings together investigative journalists and technologists working with OpenAleph or interested in using it. The Data and Research Center (DARC) has committed to keeping OpenAleph open source and wants to collaborate with newsrooms to ensure it continues to serve the community it was built for. We’ll discuss what should come next, and how we can work together to make it happen. The session will also explore the idea of a shared data library: a communal collection of scrapers and structured datasets using the FollowTheMoney (FtM) schema that can plug into OpenAleph instances and make more public data accessible to all.

The EU and the individual European countries are on an unprecedented buying spree for arms and everything else related to the defence sector. An investment in arms of €800 billion is planned, and a European Military Sales Mechanism is going to be set up to promote joint procurement and to help member states pool their demand for defence systems. This is a highly globalised industry, and components are produced in several countries, making production and lobbying difficult to follow. The European arms industry will grow significantly - how can we follow it, and what should we look for? Join this round-table to discuss ideas and network with reporters working on the subject across Europe.

Are you working on topics of algorithmic accountability? Join this meeting of AI "practitioners” to share tips and ideas from your investigations, discuss common challenges and obstacles, share lessons learned and good practices, and get peer support. (A more detailed description to follow)

Come and say farewell! We'll keep it short and sweet!