About
Andrei Popoviciu is an independent investigative journalist, reporter, audio producer and photographer covering human rights, security, migration, international development and foreign affairs stories across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. His reporting and writing appeared in the Guardian, Al Jazeera English, the Telegraph, New Lines Magazine, Foreign Policy, In These Times, Libération, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, VICE World News, Christian Science Monitor, Middle East Eye, Voxeurop, Forbes Africa, the Calvert Journal, Are We Europe and the Daily Star Lebanon. Andrei also produces long-form narrative audio stories, with notable work in Are We Europe, the Europeans and Kerning Cultures podcasts, but also radio news reports, having worked for media like RFI.
He has reported from over a dozen countries, including Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Sweden, Palestine, Israel, Senegal, The Gambia, Lebanon, Chad, Mauritania and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Together with an international consortium of journalists led by Lighthouse Reports, Andrei investigated violent and illegal deportations, called pushbacks, at the European Union's external borders. The cross-border collaboration into 'Europe's Shadow Armies' exposed through ground reporting, OSINT and money trails how national police forces are pushing back asylum-seekers in the Balkans and the Aegean sea. Andrei was the first person to ever obtain visual evidence of pushbacks from Romania to Serbia. The team's work has won a string of awards, including the De Tegel Award, the IJ4EU Impact Award, the Fetisov Award, and has been nominated for several others.
In 2022, Andrei won the Ján Kuciak Award for Investigative Journalism for his reporting on the EU's deployment of an arsenal of surveillance technologies used by national police forces to pushback and physically abuse asylum seekers at their borders. For his work covering border violence in Europe he was one of three nominees for the One World Media's New Voice Award.
Andrei also reported on the mental health conditions in French migrant detention centres, the secret world of back channel diplomacy and the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, focusing on refugees and security issues in Romania and Moldova. He produced a four-part audio series on Palestinian youth resisting the Israeli occupation through culture and an explanatory audio story about controversies surrounding Frontex, the EU's border agency. In 2022, Andrei earned the Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) to report on gentrification and the housing crisis in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He's also reported on infectious diseases and immunisation from the Democratic Republic of the Congo as part of a UN Foundation Press Fellowship.
In 2023, he won the Signal Gold and Listener's Choice Awards in the documentary section for the co-production of an audio documentary about children of asylum seekers in Sweden suffering from a mysterious medical syndrome. The same year, Andrei was featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 Europe list. Thanks to a grant from the Leonard C. Goodman Institute for Investigative Reporting he reported on the EU’s militarisation of African borders and anti-migration investments in Senegal. He is a member of the Frontline Freelance Register and has completed his hostile environment and first aid training as a Rory Peck Trust grantee.
Andrei earned his bachelor's degree in international relations and war studies from King's College London and his double master's degree in journalism and international human rights and humanitarian law from Sciences Po Paris.
You can reach him at andrei.victor.popoviciu [at] gmail [dot] com