Tom Burgis is a freelance reporter. During a year in South America, he descended Bolivian mines and became acquainted with the continent’s charming police. At the Santiago Times, he followed the pursuit of Augusto Pinochet by the families of his victims. He has written for the Guardian, the Daily Mirror, the New Statesman, the Daily Telegraph, the Big Issue and Red Pepper, among others, and was, during its brief existence, chief reporter at the London Line. He has exposed skulduggery in Iraq, Zimbabwe, Westminster and Bethnal Green, investigated the plight of asylum seekers, child prisoners, Aids victims and gypsies, covered countless protests and the G8 summit at Gleneagles, and grilled glamour models on climate change.

He has written for openDemocracy’s debates on protest and globalisation, and presides over the Bad Democracy Awards with an iron hand.

Recent articles

A year and seventy-two nominees later, openDemocracy readers vote for and against the world's primary Bad Democrat. Tom Burgis opens the envelope.

A controversial work of the beat generation’s leading junkie casts surprising light on the world’s climate-change predicament at the start of the 21st century, finds Tom Burgis.

The Bad Democracy award for October – the last before openDemocracy's grand poll for the year's worst democrat – became the object of Hungarian passion and the target of the country's hackers, reports Tom Burgis.

Rupert Murdoch has been voted winner of opendemocracy's tenth Bad Democracy award. What shameful ingratitude, says Tom Burgis.

The world was changed by the events of 11 September 2001, often in unexpected ways. The impact of the attacks can be felt in many areas of global public life – from civil liberties to trade, technology to international law. Five years on, Tom Burgis charts eleven aspects of a tremulous new era.