The BICOM Team
Daniel Ritterband
Director of Communications
Richard Pater
Director of BICOM
Richard has over 15 years experience working alongside government officials, diplomats and journalists. He regularly briefs British audiences on Israeli politics and security issues. He has appeared on the BBC and has written in a range of publications. He is also responsible for the delegations BICOM brings to Israel. Richard joined BICOM from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, where he spearheaded the engagement with the foreign press. Following the Second Lebanon War, he received the Prime Minister’s prize for excellence. Richard served in the IDF armoured brigade, where he twice received commendations, and continues to serve in the reserves. He holds a BA in Philosophy and Politics from Manchester University.
Dr Amira Halperin
Senior Research Associate
Research Associate Dr Amira Halperin specialises in media technology, refugees, and Palestinian affairs. She is the co-deputy editor of BICOM’s Fathom Journal. Amira is media expert of Forum Dvorah (women in foreign policy and national security). Dr Halperin is a collaborator with The University of British Columbia Centre for Migration Studies.
Amira is the author of the book ‘The Use of New Media by the Palestinian Diaspora in the United Kingdom’ (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018). She is the first ever Israeli researcher who conducted research on the Palestinians in the Diaspora.
Amira worked as an Investigative Broadcast Journalist for large media organisations, including BBC Television, ‘Panorama’ programme, where she investigated Islamist radicalisation.
Dr Halperin is an international media commentator, and has been interviewed on Palestinian affairs, radicalisation, refugee policy, and media. Amira obtained an MA in International Journalism, and a PhD in Communication and Media from the Communication and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster.
Calev Ben Dor
Senior Research Associate
Calev Ben Dor, based in Israel, is Senior Research Associate and the Deputy Editor of Fathom, BICOM’s quarterly journal, having been BICOM’s Director of Research from 2015 to August 2019. Before joining BICOM in November 2015, he worked for several years in the Policy Planning Division of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and additionally as a senior analyst in the National Security team of the Reut Institute, a non-partisan Tel Aviv-based strategy group. Prior to moving to Israel in 2005, Calev worked in the Public Affairs Department of the Israeli Embassy in London. Calev holds a first class honours Bachelor degree from Leeds University in International History and Politics and an MSc from the LSE in History of International Relations.
Prof. Alan Johnson
Editor of Fathom
Professor Alan Johnson is the founder and editor of BICOM’s quarterly online journal Fathom: for a deeper understanding of Israel and the region. He was a professor of democratic theory and practice at Edge Hill University before joining BICOM in 2011. He founded and edited Democratiya, a free online journal of international politics from 2005 until its incorporation into Dissent magazine in 2009. He was a co-author of the 2006 ‘Euston Manifesto’, a modern statement of social democratic antitotalitarianism, and in 2007 he edited Global Politics After 9/11: The Democratiya Interviews. Alan worked with the UK Home Office from 2008-2010 tracing the journeys taken by young British Muslims into and out of extremism and developing communication strategies to counter radicalisation.
Kira Lewis
Communications Associate
Kira Lewis joined BICOM as a Communications Associate in August 2022. Prior to that, Kira worked in national Comms and Digital at the Labour Party, and before that, as the national organiser at Labour First, the moderate faction of the party, working to win back control from the hard left. Kira holds a BA in War Studies at King’s College London and is also Councillor in the London Borough of Waltham Forest.