Bellingcat’s Online Investigation Toolkit has a long tradition but our newest version is special: It is offered in collaboration with the Bellingcat volunteer community.
Bellingcat volunteers, staff and the wider open source researcher community contribute to writing and updating toolkit descriptions. Bellingcat staff checks each toolkit entry before it goes online.
If our Toolkit Maintainers choose to be publicly mentioned, you can find their names on individual tool pages under "page maintainer".
Our Toolkit Guardians have a special role: They help us further develop this toolkit to make sure it meets the needs of open source researchers.
Our Toolkit Guardians:
Afton is a volunteer open-source investigator with training in digital investigations for use in human rights and criminal accountability. She is the Volunteer Toolkit Guardian for the category Transport.
Anisa Shabir is a volunteer open-source researcher at Bellingcat's Global Authentication Project and holds an MA in investigative journalism from the Arizona State University's Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. Anisa is the Volunteer Toolkit Guardian for the category Image/Video.
Lora is a linguist by education, media and corporate intel analyst by trade, and an occasional due diligence investigator. She is the Volunteer Toolkit Guardian for the Companies & Finance category.
Martin Sona is an interdisciplinary researcher and lecturer with a social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and tech innovation background. He's passionate about science, community coordination, and making complex information meaningful and accessible. Here, he serves as the Volunteer Toolkit Guardian for the Social Media category.
Sophie Tedling has worked with Bellingcat as a volunteer, Tech Fellow & contributor. Her background is engineering, AI & risk, and she runs PeakVisorforOSINV on X which collects input from the research community with the goal to communicate the needs of open source researchers to the PeakVisor developer team. She is the Volunteer Toolkit Guardian for the Maps & Satellites category.
