Writing
Making the Planet Glisten With Gold
While Poisoning It in the Process
Ten years after an international treaty to ban mercury, the toxic metal continues to poison. The reason might have to do with your wedding ring.
The story also appeared in audio:
The Deal
The Nepalese Sujan Khanal wants to live in Europe. Portugal makes him an offer: Now he will be picking raspberries for seven years - and receive the EU passport. About a business where only one side is sure to win.
Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Munich (German)
Aftenposten A-Magasinet, Oslo (Norwegian)
Maailman Kuvalehti, Helsinki (Finnish)
1. Prize at the German-Portuguese Journalism Award 2021
Nominated for "Best Reportage" at Theodor-Wolff Award 2021
Finalist at German Journalist Award (DJP) 2021
The Last Drop
In a village in Portugal a war has broken out over water. On one side, small farmers, growing vegetables and raising cattle. On the other, multinational corporations producing berries for the northern European market. Here, a question is being debated that will be pressing for all of Europe in the near future: Once the rain stops, who gets the last drops of water?
The Fruits of Exploitation
This reporting was supported by the Modern Slavery Unveiled grant from journalismfund.eu
1. Prize at the German-Portuguese Journalism Award 2024
This story also appeared in audio:
Fish to Fish food
Fish farming is supposed to save the oceans from overfishing. It works, for Europe. But in Senegal it leads to a paradox: The people lack fish, because it is fed to our fish.
This reporting was supported by the Otto Brenner Foundation
This story also appeared in audio:
A Brilliant Business
Transporting fish around the world just so that they can be used as aquarium ornaments in Europe, the US and Japan? Madness, say animal rights organizations. But in the Amazon basin, conservationists are fighting for more ornamental fish exports.
A report from the beginning of the supply chain.
Climate change, monoculture and the grandiosity complex of a 20th century dictator are causing increasingly deadly forest fires in Portugal – and the comeback of an almost forgotten profession. Suddenly the country urgently needs shepherds who keep the flammable undergrowth short. Protecting their home from the flames.
Let it Burn!
Portugal, Australia, Brandenburg: forest fires are raging around the globe. In extreme cases they unleash unprecedented destructive power as "firestorms". So what is to be done? Spanish fire researcher Marc Castellnou says we should let them burn. And we need different forests. We need to live with fire. With his theses, he is fighting a lonely battle against the fire departments of the world.
The Outermost Border
While Europe focusses on the Mediterranean, a whole other refugee crisis is happening along one of its most distant borders: On an island in the Indian Ocean.
Panorama Nyheter, Oslo (Norwegian)
This reporting was supported by the IJ4EU investigative journalism grant
Nominated for "Best Freelance Reporting" at German Reporters Award 2023
This story also appeared in audio:
The High
Dozens of farmers who used to produce papayas, avocados or passion fruit in the Algarve are reorganizing: They're growing cannabis. It's a bet on the legalization of marijuana throughout Europe.
Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Munich (German)
2. Prize at the German-Portuguese Journalism Award 2022
Finalist at German Journalism Award (DJP) 2022
The Valley of Bikes
The bicycle industry in Portugal was long considered a thing of the past. For some years now, it has been experiencing a renaissance - and the pandemic helped revive it.
A Virus instead of Antibiotics
Every year, more people travel to Tbilisi, Georgia, to seek treatment with bacteriophages.
Reportagen, Bern (German)
Nominated for the Zurich Journalist Award 2023
The story also appeared in audio, read by Tim-Fabian Hoffmann:
How criminal gangs around Lisbon harvest and sell the toxic short-necked clam.
Brazil's coconut crackers take no more than the jungle can give them. So far, Brazilian law has protected their sustainable way of life. But now that Jair Bolsonaro is president, their home could become pasture.
Rio, Bravo
How a retired German dentist and a group of children have become a crucial part of Brazil’s fight against infectious disease
New Scientist, London (English)
Bistandsaktuelt, Oslo (Norwegian)
MO Magazine, Brussels (Flemish)
This reporting was supported by the Pulitzer Center
Nominated for the Medicine Journalism Award 2023 of Stiftung Gesundheit
A Crazy Story
Thomas E. Lovejoy has been conducting perhaps the largest ecological experiment in the world since 1979. The Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project provides some of the most influential information about the rainforest’s ecosystem and the future of conservation. But the science can be hard to interpret, and the facts are useless if they fall on deaf ears. So Lovejoy brings us into the jungle to fall in love.
Wine from Nordeaux
Climate change is forcing winemakers to move their grapes to higher altitudes and further north.
How do you protect a beach in Brazil? With Charles Darwin's notebooks.
Three years ago, mine sludge poisoned an entire region in Brazil. Can a completely destroyed river be saved?
Audio
The Cure - Heilung aus dem Grab
Seven-Part Podcast Series, published by Deutschlandfunk Kultur and Pola.Berlin (2022)
Every year, thousands of pilgrims visit the remote grave of Father McGirr, in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. They come looking for the Cure. The grave’s clay is said to be holy, it cures all ailments. Gerry Quinn, a microbiologist and son of Fermanagh, took a sample of the clay to his lab and found out: The clay really does have healing powers.
In the priest’s grave might lie the solution to one of medicine’s most pressing problems: The fight against multi-resistant bacteria.
Nominated for "Best Podcast" at German Reporter's Awards 2022
Selected Work for the International Features Conference AudioDocs 2023
Nominated for the Medicine Journalism Award 2023 of Stiftung Gesundheit
The outermost border
Radio documentary
published by ARD Radio (2023)
While Europe looks at the refugees in the Mediterranean, a barely noticed drama is taking place in the Indian Ocean: Thousands of people flee to the French island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean every year. The French government responds with summary deportations. The right to asylum and the European Convention on Human Rights are de facto nullified.
Floating Justice
Radio Documentary
published by the BBC World Service (2022)
and Deutschlandfunk (2022)
At the mouth of the Amazon, a steamboat brings justice to the villages on the riverbanks.
Fish to fish food
Radio Documentary
published by ARD Radio (2023)
Fish farming is supposed to save the oceans from overfishing. It works, for Europe. But in Senegal it leads to a paradox: The people lack fish, because it is fed to our fish.
