James Deane is Director of Policy and Learning at BBC Media Action, the BBC’s international development charity.  He has more than 30 years’ experience in supporting independent media and journalism around the world.  He is a founding member and former Executive Director of the Panos Institute, founded in 1986 to support developing country journalism.  He is a leading commentator and adviser on media development issues and author and commissioner of numerous papers, briefings, books, and features on the role of media in society. His current principal focus is on the role of media in fragile and divided societies and he has written and commissioned several BBC Media Action policy briefings on this and other issues. He is an elected steering committee member of the Global Forum for Media Development and sits on the advisory boards of the Communication Initiative, the UK Research Partnership on Conflict, Crime and Security, and the London School of Economics Department of Media and Communications