Swaminathan Natarajan

As a person with a wide range of interest from politics to wild life conservation, the field of journalism is a natural choice for me. As a journalist, I have worked across media platforms – Print, TV, Online and Radio.  I started my career as an education beat reporter in 1999 with a leading Tamil News Paper Dinamalar in the South Indian city of Chennai. After about 2 years, I moved to television when NDTV started providing Tamil News for STAR VIJAY. My 5 year stint as a TV reporter enabled me to cover many top stories in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

I have done extensive reporting on the devastation caused by the 2004 Tsunami in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. At that time I was working for the SUN NEWS. It is the first 24 Hour News channel in Tamil Nadu. In 2005, I moved to London to work for the BBC Tamil service (Radio and Online). Around that time the ceasefire in Sri Lanka was falling apart leading to full blown war, which resulted in the defeat of the LTTE.

During the final weeks of war, Sri Lankan government implemented full scale information blockade by denying access to the war zone and to the refugee camps. Yet, using my sources in Sri Lanka, I did manage to get through to the civilians trapped in the war zone and brought out the precarious conditions there.

Having closely followed the Sri Lankan situation for the past 6 years, I came to Oxford to analyse the post war media situation in Sri Lanka and its perceived impact on the reconciliation process.

I hold a Masters in Defence and Strategic Studies and a Post Graduate Diploma in Journalism.