Willem Feenstra

Willem Feenstra was selected for the 2026 Shortlist with What the wounds are telling us.

Willem Feenstra (1988) is a Dutch investigative journalist working for national newspaper De Volkskrant. Since 2013 he has written about injustice and government, publishing investigations into issues such as corruption in sports, misconduct within the armed forces and wrongdoing at the Dutch public broadcaster. He recently focused on investigations into possible hybrid sabotage and other security threats. Feenstra has won the Netherlands’ highest journalism award, De Tegel, three times.

Barbara Matejčić

Barbara Matejčić was selected for the 2026 Shortlist with Killing for the photo.

Barbara Matejcic is an award-winning Croatian freelance journalist, non-fiction writer, researcher and audio producer focused on social issues and human rights in the Balkan region.

She writes for Croatian and international media, produces multimedia projects, and radio documentaries for Croatian Radiotelevision. Barbara collaborates with activists, artists, and scholars in various projects as well as with international organizations and institutions. She lectures Investigative journalism and Feature writing at the Journalism Studies in Zagreb. She won several awards, including Srđan Aleksić Award for the Courage and Excellence in Journalism in the Balkan region (2025), European Press Prize Special Award (2024) and Investigative Journalism for Europe Award (IJ4EU, 2024) with the journalistic team and ‘The Border Graves Investigation’, and was finalist of the Daphne Galizia Caruana Award (2025) and selected for the 2021 European Press Prize shortlist with ‘Sisters of Europe. The Croatian Journalists’ Association awarded her as the best radio journalist for her documentary about border deaths (2025) and the best print journalist in Croatia for her features about post-war societies in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (2014).