Inga Sikorskaya

Inga Sikorskaya works as the Director ofSchool of Peacemaking and Media Technology in Central Asiafrom 2012. She is a professional journalist, media expert and trainer. Her areas of expertise include freedom of expression, peace study, hate speech, diversity and language rights, conflict and ethnic journalism.

Inga is the founder of the School of Peacemaking & Media Technology in 2010 after then she found herself in the center of the ethnic violence in the southern Kyrgyzstan and has made a numerous media reports and photos from the conflict zone. She initiated the constant media monitoring for hate speech, that until then was not in Kyrgyzstan and adopted research methodology based on international experience.

Mrs. I.Sikorskaya has wide international experience in media, conflict transformation, peace research and peace journalism training. This year she led some workshops for countering online hate speech, that have been supported by the OSCE Center in Astana (Kazakhstan), the training-workshops for youth journalists and activists in Kyrgyzstan and CA region. She was a member of a working group

Combating Hatred in Social Media – Exploring Interrelations with Freedom of Opinion and Expression to develop recommendations at the OSCE Chairmanship Conference on Tolerance and Diversity in Germany in October 2016.

She comments regularly on freedom, hate speech, conflict and media issues for the Radio Liberty, IWPR, other media and conference, and has been heavily involved to creation of the post-conflict policy in Kyrgyzstan.

Mrs. I.Sikorskaya is the author of more than50 analytical reports for the British Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR),where she spent seven years as a senior editor for Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the most closed countries in Central Asia. Previously Inga worked in Kyrgyz TV and radio.

In 2015 she joined on research project for the organisation Peace Direct that funds and promotes local peacebuilding in conflict regions around the world. Inga’s role is of Local Peacebuilding Expert in Kyrgyzstan, she conducts research on peacebuilding, writes information on peacebuilding organisations and its analysis the approaches and cases which can be read the website.

In 2012-2013 she has been to Afghanistan, where she made a series of photo essays on "the back of the war” and create ​​the hand book entitles "How can women journalists make visual reports from Afghanistan". Besides she was one from an author of the handbook "Effective Communication" and "The Human Rights Reporting" for journalists and activists in Central Asia, co-author investigation "Health in Turkmenistan after Niyazov” at the London School of Hygiene&Tropical Medicine.

In 2015 Inga developed the first online course for journalists and activistsin Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia on how to cover ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity in time of peace and conflict.

Inga is a member of the Hate and Extremists Content Expertise Council under the Ministry of Justice and several working groups on peace development. She holds B.A. in Mass Communications and Journalism and M.A. in Law.