Derek Bowler is the Head of Social Newsgathering at the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), where he leads a global team of digital verification journalists and OSINT investigations specialists. He has over 10 years of experience in discovering, verifying, and clearing eyewitness media for the EBU membership and other media organisations. Derek has produced documentaries, investigations, and projects using eyewitness media and visual forensics.

He has also co-authored Eyewitness Textures: User-Generated Content and Journalism in the Twenty-First Century, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, and co-authored the EBU Eyewitness Principles and Guidelines. He developed the Agile Newsroom event, a training model for visual verification skills, listed among the promising practices from Media and Information Literacy (MIL) training models in the Council of Europe’s Supporting Quality Journalism through Media and Information Literacy study.

Derek holds a BA (Hons) degree in Journalism and New Media from the University of Limerick, certifications in Terrorism and Counterterrorism from Georgetown University, and Intellectual Property Law and Policy from the University of Pennsylvania.