Moderator: Valerie Hopkins

Valerie Hopkins is the Financial Times’ South-East Europe correspondent, covering Hungary, Romania, the former Yugoslavia and Albania. Before moving to Budapest, she worked extensively in the Balkans, with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and as a freelance journalist. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Politico, Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, the Guardian, Reuters, OpenDemocracy, Mother Jones, and more. Valerie has a Master of Arts in Political Journalism from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and a B.A. in International Relations (focus on Russian and Post-Soviet Studies) from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.