Paul Lewis

Paul Lewis is Special Projects Editor at the Guardian. His award-winning brand of investigative journalism has become known for its innovative use of social media and crowd-sourcing. Lewis joined the newspaper in 2005 as a trainee, aged 24. He quickly established a career covering hard-hitting topics in the UK and abroad, where he reported in environments as varied as Antarctica, Vietnam, Dubai and Venezuela. He now runs a team of journalists tasked with finding new ways of conducting "mutualised" news-gathering through micro-blogging sites such as Twitter. In 2007, his investigations into fundamentalist Islam and illegal migration were commended by the Washington Post, where he was appointed to the annual Stern Fellowship. In 2009, Lewis won the Bevins prize for outstanding investigative journalism for revelations about the death of Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper seller who collapsed and died after being attacked by police at the G20 protests in London. He was named Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards 2010, one of the foremost accolades for UK journalists. Lewis studied at Harvard University, where he co-wrote a book on the trials of heads of state, and Cambridge University, where he served as President of the Students Union.