The European Whistleblowing Institute stems from a deep belief that there is an enormous societal gain if we become better at organising for truth.

Whistleblowers are the ones in organisations who speak up. They are the ones who are trying to guard our interests as a society in addressing wrongdoing and who aim to inform the public when abuse of power happens. In Europe, we are still defining the codes of conduct to talk about whistleblowers. EWI helps to set the stage for that.

photography: Siora Photography for Unsplash

Dr. Vigjilenca Abazi

“We help build the European legal profession in whistleblowing.”

After almost a decade of working on whistleblowing – as an academic, policy advisor, and lawyer – I’ve seen different angles to what we get right and what we get wrong in law. EWI comes from a passion to advance the legal profession and education to meet the challenge of the complexities whistleblowing in our times bring about. 

Amplifying whistleblowing thinking, insights and ideas.

EWI builds expertise and capacities across Europe. Our aim is to become the leading institute in Europe for advancing whistleblower empowerment, acceptance, and safeguarding. We will achieve this by focussing on the three pillars of education, research, and policy advice.

We are a unique institute where insights from different fields are combined, where creative ideas can be explored, where we can pierce public-private divides in knowledge and have organisations benefit from the latest state of the art research based on data. On top of that the institute is a place where research can benefit from direct access to all relevant stakeholders.

Our goal is to establish a legal profession in Europe in this field. Very soon, every organisation with 50 employees and above, will need a ‘whistleblower officer’. We aim to assist professionals and organisations to build their capacity to meet this new challenge.

Dr. Vigjilenca Abazi

Dr. Lauren Kierans BL

Dr. Dimitrios Kafteranis

Bruno Galizzi, MSc

  • Co-Founder & Executive Director

    Vigjilenca is an awarded legal scholar widely recognized for her expertise on whistleblowing. Vigjilenca’s legal advice on whistleblowing is sought both in European policy-making and private industry. She co-drafted the model European law on whistleblower protection for the European Parliament and was a Rapporteur for the Council of Europe. She has given numerous talks and training for companies, organizations, and public institutions, including NATO, the Academy of European Law, Navex, Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. Vigjilenca also collaborates with a wide range of civil society actors, including co-establishing the first ever Podcast fully dedicated on whistleblowing with the Whistleblower International Network. She was named an Honorary Senior Fellow at the Government Accountability Project in Washington D.C., the world’s oldest organization on whistleblowing. The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences named Dr. Abazi the recipient of its Early Career Award in 2020 acknowledging her innovative scientific contribution and policy impact in whistleblowing. Dr Abazi is a tenured Assistant Professor of European law at Maastricht University. Previously, Dr. Abazi was a Fellow at Yale Law School – Information Society Project, Emile Noel Fellow at NYU School of Law, and Fulbright Scholar at Columbia Law School.

  • Co-Founder & Director of Education

    Dr. Lauren Kierans BL is a barrister and Lecturer in Law at Maynooth University where she lectures on Whistleblowing Law at undergraduate level, as well as delivering a Professional Certificate on Whistleblowing Law, Practice and Policy. She was awarded her PhD on the Irish Protected Disclosures Act 2014 in June 2019. She has published articles and book chapters on protected disclosures and co-authored the Annotated Statute on the Protected Disclosures Act 2014. She has also produced country reports on protected disclosures and spoken on this topic at various conferences, CPD events, round-table panel discussions, and legislative briefings at both national and international level. Lauren was awarded the governmental project for the drafting of the protected disclosures procedures guidance for public bodies on behalf of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. Lauren is the founder of the Irish Whistleblowing Law Society and an associate with Transparency International Ireland’s Integrity at Work programme, which provides training to organisations on whistleblowing/protected disclosures. Lauren’s monograph ‘Whistleblowing and the Protected Disclosures Act in Ireland: Law, Rights and Policy’ is due to be published in 2023 by Clarus Press.

  • Co-Founder & Director of Research

    Dimitrios is an Assistant Professor of Law at Coventry University. He has studied English Language and Literature and then Law. He holds a Master of Arts in International Studies and an LLM in European Economic and Financial Criminal Law. He completed his PhD at the University of Luxembourg on the legal protection of whistle-blowers in the EU banking and financial sector. He worked at the Court of Justice of the European Union prior to joining Coventry University.

  • Co-Founder & Director of Policy

    Bruno is a Policy Advisor on digital regulation at the UK Government. Previously, he worked at a number of leading NGOs on free speech in Europe and Latin America. He is experienced in policy research and campaigning on issues of freedom of expression and human rights, has extensive research experience with both qualitative and quantitative methods. As the recipient of the Chevening Award, he conducted his Master Studies at LSE on social and public policy. In his master thesis, he examined the role of trust in whistleblowing through empirical research.