Friday 24 November, 6.00 – 7.00 pm, Pavilion Room
We are delighted to welcome Quentin Sommerville, who will be in conversation with Mary Buckley (HH Life Fellow) at 6pm in the Pavilion Room at Hughes Hall on Friday 24 November.
Discussion will span Quentin’s career and cover many of the world’s states from which he has reported and the pressing issues affecting different peoples in them.
- Journalism – what has Quentin learnt over the years?
- Reporting – how does he view its purpose?
- Moral questions – what ethical issues can present themselves?
- Historical contexts – how do different political, military and social contexts affect the nature of reporting from countries as varied as China, Libya, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey and Ukraine?
- Relationships on the ground – what factors are crucial in data gathering, filming and news delivery?
All welcome, including non-college members.
Please reserve a place via this Eventbrite link, click here.
About the speaker
Quentin Sommerville is a senior correspondent for BBC News. For the last decade he has been based in the Middle East covering conflicts in Libya, Syria and Iraq. He reports for the BBC’s Six and Ten o’clock news bulletins and Radio 4 PM & Today programmes. Since Russia’s invasion, he has reported extensively from Ukraine.
He was based in Kabul, Afghanistan from 2010-13 and returned there again in 2023 after the Taliban’s victory. Before that he spent five years in China for the BBC as Shanghai and then Beijing correspondent.
He started in journalism as a business reporter for the Sunday Herald and Scotland on Sunday newspapers. His first job was with Lloyds List newspaper in London.
He has won a number of reporting awards. This year he was part of the BBC team which won the Royal Television Society (RTS) Journalism Award for their coverage on Ukraine. In 2023 he was shortlisted for the George Orwell Journalism prize.
Quentin studied at Edinburgh University and grew up in Stirling and Glasgow. He now lives in Beirut, Lebanon.
