Emma Jane Kirby

Emma Jane Kirby joined the BBC on work experience after graduating and has never left the Corporation since! After 3 years as a reporter in local radio, she joined BBC Radio 5 Live as a producer for two years before becoming the reporter for Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. Radio 4 documentaries followed (including one recorded entirely in zero gravity, 44,000 feet over Moscow!) and BBC World Television. In 2001 she began her career as a foreign correspondent, first as Geneva and UN Correspondent, then in Brussels as Europe Correspondent and then she moved to France to become the BBC’s Paris correspondent. She has also made several TV and Radio documentaries in Afghanistan and was embedded with French forces in Kapisa. Since returning to the UK five years ago, she completed a Reuters Fellowship back at Oxford University, and has now taken up a post as a reporter for BBC Radio 4’s PM and The World At One where she specialises in European stories. Her first book, The Optician of Lampedusa, was published last year and was shortlisted for Waterstones Book Of The Year.