John Pilger is a renowned investigative journalist and documentary film-maker whose courageous and incisive work has shaped a whole generation of journalists, film-makers and academics. He has been an accredited war correspondent in Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Biafra and the Middle East. His work on repressive regimes, imperial powers and war crimes is always characterized by the voices of the victims of state violence and corruption. His documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US and in a New Statesman survey of the 50 heroes of our time, Pilger came fourth behind Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. His latest film The War You Don’t See explores in graphic detail the role of the media in imperialist wars like Iraq and Afghanistan and questions why so many journalists subscribe to the ideologies of their governments in the reporting of those wars. It also challenges the reporting of war crimes, especially those committed by western powers. It is first and foremost a film ‘about truth and justice’.

Full details of John Pilger’s work can be found at johnpilger.com

Noam Chomsky (on left) is the first Honorary Fellow of the International State Crime Initiative. He is Professor of Linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While he is highly esteemed within his first discipline, Chomsky is also widely known as a political commentator and philosopher. He has been a leading critic of US foreign policy since the Vietnam War in the 1960s and has written widely on the use of US power overseas. His books on this topic include Hegemony or Survival and Power and Terror: Post-9/11 Talks and Interviews. He has also published on Cambodia, the Middle East, Central and Latin America, Kosovo and East Timor. Most recently he has written books on anarchism and resistance, including New Worlds of Indigenous Resistance (2010). A full list of publications can be found on Professor Chomsky's MIT Profile.

Stan Cohen (on right in above photograph) is the Martin White Professor of Sociology at LSE. He has received the Sellin-Glueck award from the American Society of Criminology and in 1998 was elected as a fellow of the British Academy. He helped set up the new LSE Centre for the Study of Human Rights and now runs its teaching programme. He is also on the Board of the (Geneva-based) International Council on Human Rights Policy. He has written about criminological theory, prisons, social control, criminal justice poli His most recent book, States of Denial: knowing about atrocities and suffering (Polity Press, 2001), deals with personal and political reactions to information, images and appeals about inhumanities, cruelty and social suffering. States of Denial was chosen as Outstanding Publication of 2001 by the International Division of the American Society of Criminology and was awarded the 2002 British Academy Book Prize. He was awarded Honorary Doctorates by the University of essex (2004) and Middlesex (2008) and in 2010 was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the LSE. In 2009 he received the Outstanding Achievement Award of the British Society of Criminology. A full list of publications can be found on Professor Cohen's LSE Profile.