Ottavia Spaggiari

Ottavia Spaggiari was selected as runner-up for the 2021 European Press Prize Distinguished Reporting Award with ‘Escape: the woman who brought her trafficker to justice.’

Ottavia Spaggiari is an Italian independent journalist and long-form writer focusing on social justice issues, migration and human rights. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The New Yorker, Slate, The New Humanitarian and others. She has been a fellow at Columbia Journalism School’s Global Migration Project and a recipient of the Investigative Journalism for Europe grant. She received her Master of Arts in Politics and Global Affairs from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was a San Paolo fellow.

Szabolcs Panyi

Szabolcs Panyi was selected for the 2021 European Press Prize shortlist with ‘How Orbán Played Germany, Europe’s Great Power.’

Szabolcs graduated from Eötvös Loránd University Budapest where he studied Hungarian language and literature. Between 2013 and 2018, he was an editor and political reporter at Index.hu, Hungary’s largest independent news site. In 2017, he helped launch VSquare.org, a cross-border investigative journalism initiative in the Visegrád region. At Arizona State University, he studied investigative journalism on a Hubert H. Humphrey (Fulbright) Fellowship in 2017-2018. In the fall of 2018, he joined Hungarian non-profit journalism center Direkt36.hu, where he mainly works on stories related to national security and foreign policy. He received the Transparency-Soma Award annually recognizing best Hungarian investigative journalism in 2015, 2016 and 2020. He was shortlisted for the European Press Prize in 2018 with his story titled ‘Satan’s hand: Russian meddling behind Budapest’s metro chaos.‘