Mobile Stories International team

Lotta Bergseth is a social entrepreneur and experienced photographer, bringing extensive background from prominent Swedish newsrooms like Metro and Dagens Industri. As a co-founder of Mobile Stories (2015) and Voice4you (2017), Lotta has been at the forefront of innovative projects aimed at empowering young people. Since 2019, she has been instrumental in expanding Mobile Stories through a Google.org funded initiative, “Empowering Young People with Media and Information Literacy (MIL)”.

Lotta has also dedicated herself to education, delivering lectures to students and teachers, and developing various educational resources, including lesson plans, ethical guidelines for online conduct, and digital courses for schools. She co-authored the book “Digital kompetens och källkritik i praktiken”, published in 2019 by Sanoma publishing, which is widely used by teachers, librarians, and in teacher education.

Currently, Lotta leads the EU project ProMS under the Voice4you association providing MIL education to schools in Finland, Romania, and Ireland. Lotta is responsible for development of the tool, implementation and partly the content production.

Maria manages operations and partnerships at News Decoder. An ardent believer in the values of global citizenship, she’s worked in experiential education, youth media and cultural diplomacy for nearly 20 years and has facilitated cross-border exchanges for hundreds of youth and professionals from more than 100 countries. Maria also provides operations and administrative support for this project.

Previously, Maria served in the Peace Corps in Tbilisi, Georgia, where she worked with a civil society NGO on fundraising, digital storytelling and youth citizen journalism projects. As Vice President of WorldChicago, a partner of the U.S. State Department, Maria convened local and global leaders to share knowledge and build connections, and founded Youth Diplomats to offer substantive global experiences for teens. She also held positions at Street-Level Youth Media and the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum.

A former Jeopardy! contestant, Maria is a published illustrator of two books, Art Hiding in New York and Art Hiding in Paris, with a third book in production. She holds a bachelor’s and two master’s degrees from the University of Chicago.

Sabīne is a media literacy curriculum and tool developer, as well as a journalist with nine years of experience in the media industry currently working for News Decoder. Her main focus is on the Mobile Stories project where she leads English language content development and coordinates research on learning goals and user experience. Sabīne also works as a freelance journalist, mainly for the Estonian newspaper Postimees reporting about the most important events in Latvia.

Previously, Sabīne was a Program Engagement Coordinator in the U.S. Department of State program “Media Literacy in the Baltics” administered by IREX. She coordinated the content creation of an online course VeryVerified.eu and blended learning lessons in five languages used by thousands of learners in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Prior to that, she worked as a disinformation reporter and a fact-checker at the Baltic Center for Investigative Journalism Re:Baltica.

Throughout her career, Sabīne has worked for online and print media, as well as public radio and TV in Latvia. She got her master’s degree in the Erasmus Mundus Journalism program at Aarhus University and the University of Amsterdam and spent a semester at the University of California, Berkeley as a visiting student researcher.

Chloé leads the Media Literacy/Media Education activities, events and projects along with supporting the day-to-day management of the Media & Learning Association. She is responsible for the delivery of several Erasmus+ projects and other MIL projects. She supports project ideation, incubation, coordination and dissemination. Graduated with a Master in Cultural Studies, a Master in Western Literature, and a Degree in Art History, she has worked mainly in the coordination and mediation of cultural projects, such as several contemporary art festivals and exhibitions in Belgium and France. Due to her studies and professional background, she also has some experience in research and project development. Within ProMS – Chloé leads the delivery of dissemination activities, outreach and the promotion and distribution of Mobile Stories.

Sally Reynolds has been working part-time as the Chief Operational Officer since October 2015 at MLA. In this capacity, she has overall responsibility for the day-to-day management of the association and reports directly to the MLA Board of Management. Through her work in the association, Sally has been actively engaged in various media literacy activities for several years and is currently the Director of Media Literacy for EDMOeu as well as being an observer in the European Commission’s Media Literacy Experts group. She was also a member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Tackling disinformation and promoting digital literacy through education and training in 2022 which drafted guidelines for teachers and is an active member of EMIL, EPRA’s media literacy taskforce as well as leading and supporting several media literacy projects funded by the European Commission and EMIF. Sally also works regularly as a reviewer and evaluator for the European Commission. Within ProMS – Sally provides senior-level supervision and support to the project and MLA’s contributions.

Alex is the editor in chief of Gen, revistă, one of the „sister-projects” of Gen, știri. A former Romanian language and literature teacher, he was involved with ”Forum Apulum” for seven years. In this time frame, his main focus were projects developed in Romanian high schools related to promoting civic engagement and media literacy. Given the background, some of the projects were connected to education through art, one of them being Gen, revistă. In the ProMS project he is the in-country coordinator, assisting the four chosen high schools from Romania in working with the Mobile Stories platform.

Eileen Culloty is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communications and deputy director of the Institute for Media, Democracy, and Society at Dublin City University. Her research interests concern disinformation, media literacy education, and public media. Eileen coordinates the Ireland Hub of the European Digital Media Observatory and is co-chair of Media Literacy Ireland. She coordinates the research strategy aimed at measuring the increase of knowledge and confidence in discerning quality information after the use of Mobile Stories.

Ciarán Cronin is a Post-Primary Project Officer with Scoilnet.  Scoilnet, the national portal managed by the Department of Education in Ireland, serves teachers and schools by providing open educational digital resources which includes media literacy. Ciarán works with the national coordinator to facilitate the Mobile Stories project across Irish schools. 

She helps ensure consistency, level suitability and language standardisation for the Mobile Stories media literacy tool. She is also involved in compiling glossaries and proofreading classroom activities and worksheets in English.

Kaja Andrić is a third-year Journalism student at New York University. She is also studying Romance Languages with a concentration in French and Italian. Kaja is News Decoder’s editorial intern since January 2024. She has written for The New York Times as a stringer during the Trump Trial and student protests over Gaza. Previously, she was a correspondent for the Florida Weekly newspaper’s Palm Beach community chapter. In 2022, she was Florida Scholastic Press Association’s Writer of the Year.

Kaja also contributed to the Mobile Stories project, where she helped edit videos and write educational articles.

She looks forward to working on reportage that connects the unsung stories among us, in all corners of the world.

Emelie is a lead teacher at Gränbyskolan, Uppsala, Sweden where she teaches German and Social studies. She is also an author and has written the book “Världen i klassrummet – från det lokala till det globala” together with Charlotta Granath. She is an eTwinning ambassador for Sweden and has many years of experience in working with international projects, both eTwinning and Erasmus+. Emelie gives lectures and workshops on various themes, for example, democracy and values, digitalization and internationalization in symbiosis, nationally and internationally. She consults for the Prince Couple’s Foundation and their platform “Lajka” (https://lajka.prinsparetsstiftelse.se/) and has received the Swedish Prize “Guldäpplet”( https://www2.diu.se/guldapple/pristagare/emelie-hahn/), European Language Label and other educational prizes. 

Emelie has collaborated with Mobile Stories for several years. For the English version of the platform, she led the cross-border exercise and teachers’ guide development for the eTwinning network and other educators.