Imke Henkel

Imke is a lecturer in Journalism and Media at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, and an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research interests include the intersection of journalism and democracy – including a critical approach to mis- and disinformation studies, digital journalism, comparative research, and journalists’ role conceptions. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Journalism and Journalism Studies. In 2021, her book ‘Destructive Storytelling: Disinformation and the Eurosceptic Myth that Shaped Brexit’ was published by Palgrave Macmillan. She is also the joint Principal Investigator for the UK within the Worlds of Journalism Study, a comparative survey project spanning over 70 countries around the world. She is the co-editor of the report ‘UK Journalists in the 2020s: Who They Are, How They Work, and What They Think’, published in April 2025 by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Previously, Imke has worked as a journalist for several decades. She has trained as a broadcasting journalist with German national radio Deutschlandfunk (comparable to BBC Radio 4) and worked as a presenter of political news shows for Deutschlandfunk. Imke moved to London in late 1998, from where she covered British politics and economics for German national papers Süddeutsche Zeitung, Tagesspiegel, and Die Zeit among others. Between 2004 and 2014 she was the London correspondent for the German news magazine Focus (an English language equivalent would be the American Time magazine). In her time as a foreign correspondent she has appeared on Newsnight, BBC News, the Today programme, Sky News, LBC, and Monocle 24 among others to comment on EU, British and German politics.