Two new experts have agreed to join News-Decoder’s team of correspondents, adding depth in defense issues and international affairs to our pool of writers.
Alexander Nicoll, from Britain, and Rashad Mammadov, from Azerbaijan, raise the number of News-Decoder correspondents to 42.
The News-Decoder team of correspondents has more than 900 years of experience working in dozens of countries on all continents. Our team includes authors, professors, scholars, communications consultants and a former senior U.S. Defense Department official — all of whom are keen to put their experience and skills at the service of young people.
They are uniquely qualified to highlight the different facets of international affairs, and they wear their impartiality as a badge of honor.
Alexander Nicoll is a writer on defense and European issues. From 2003 to 2015, he was on the staff of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, where he was editor of the London-based think tank’s annual review of international affairs. Previously he spent 18 years as a reporter and editor at the Financial Times. In the mid-1990s, Nicoll was seconded to New Delhi as consulting editor of the Business Standard, an Indian newspaper. He began his career at Reuters as a correspondent in Hong Kong, Paris, Tehran and New York. Nicoll obtained his degree from Oxford University.
Rashad Mammadov is a PhD candidate at Indiana University with a research focus on political communication. Born in Azerbaijan, he worked as a journalist in Baku in the early 2000’s for daily newspapers and analytical magazines. His experience covering the geopolitics of the Middle East and former Soviet states led to his choice of an academic career with a focus on media-government relations. Mammadov is fluent in four languages – Azeri, Turkish, Russian and English – and he holds two master’s degrees, in journalism and mass communication.