30 October - 02 November 2025

   

the hawke centre at 
ubud writers & readers festival

professor peter greste

 

the hawke centre at
ubud writers and readers festival

Presented by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre 

The Hawke Centre is delighted to continue our partnership with the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, featuring acclaimed Australian journalist and media freedom advocate Professor Peter Greste.

Peter has spent over 25 years as a foreign correspondent with the BBC and Al Jazeera. His experiences, including a wrongful imprisonment in Egypt, have shaped his strong commitment to press freedom and journalist safety.

Peter Greste will present three sessions across the Festival. Visit the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival for full details of the three sessions below

Thursday 30 October, 10am - 11am, Indus Restaurant 
Writers Behind Bars – exploring the challenges faced by writers under oppressive regimes. 

Saturday 1 November, 2pm-3pm, Indus Restaurant
Peter Greste: The Correspondent – sharing his journey from global conflict zones to advocating for media freedom. 

Sunday 2 November, 12.45-1.45pm, Alang Alang Stage
The Politics of Reporting – examining the intersection of journalism and politics and the ethical dilemmas faced by reporters today.

Should you be attending the festival, we encourage you to join Peter’s sessions for his invaluable insights into journalism and press freedom. If you are unable to attend, stay tuned for links to recordings so you can watch the sessions online post-event.

For more information about the festival, visit the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival website.

The Hawke Centre has presented events at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in 2019 with Richard Fidler, 2018 with Jane Caro, 2017 with Nurat Durrani.  

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speaker

Professor Peter Greste
Film Maker, Journalist, Author and
Professor Of Journalism, Macquarie University 

Macquarie University’s Professor Peter Greste is an award-winning broadcast journalist, academic, media freedom activist and author. Before becoming an academic in 2018, he spent 25 years as a foreign correspondent mostly for the BBC and Al Jazeera. He began his career with the civil war in Yugoslavia and elections in South Africa as a freelance reporter in the early 90’s. In 1995 he joined the BBC as its Afghanistan correspondent and went on to cover Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

In 2011 he won a Peabody Award for a BBC documentary on Somalia. Later that year, he moved to Al Jazeera as its East Africa correspondent. In December 2013 he was covering Egypt on a short three-week assignment when he was arrested on terrorism charges. After a trial widely dismissed as a sham, he was convicted and sentenced to seven years behind bars.

In prison, he wrote a series of letters defending press freedom. Those letters established the tone of the campaign that ultimately forced the Egyptian government to free him in February the following year after 400 days behind bars. To honour his advocacy, he has won numerous domestic and international awards, including a Walkley for a 'lifetime contribution to journalism' (Australia’s highest accolade for journalists), the British Royal Television Society’s Judges Award, and Tribeca Disruptive Innovator’s Awards all in 2015.

He has also won the International Association of Press Clubs’ Freedom of Speech Award; the Australian Human Rights Commission Medal, and the Australian Press Council’s 2018 Press Freedom award. Peter has written about his experiences in The First Casualty, published in 2017 and now in production as a feature film. He remains an avid advocate of media freedom and journalist safety.

Peter Greste is also a member of The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre's Advisory Board. 

 

 

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Presented by
The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre

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as part of ubud writers & readers festival

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While the views presented by speakers within The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre public program are their own and are not necessarily those of either the University of South Australia, or The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, they are presented in the interest of open debate and discussion in the community and reflect our themes of: Strengthening our Democracy - Valuing our Diversity - Building our Future. The Hawke Centre reserves the right to change their program at any time without notice.