Serge Michel

Serge Michel, France and Switzerland, is reporter at large at Le Monde, in Paris. He has worked as a journalist in Switzerland, Iran, Africa and the Balkans. He won the Albert Londres Prize in 2001, France's most prestigious journalistic award, for his work in Iran. He’s the founder of the Bondy Blog, a “citizen journalism” website written from within the volatile French suburbs.

Together with photographer Paolo Woods, Michel is the author of Un Monde de Brut (‘A Crude World,’ Seuil, 2003), a behind-the-scenes look at the oil industry following pipelines through Texas, the Caucasus, Russia, the Gulf and Africa, and of American Chaos (Seuil 2004) which follows America’s turbulent path through Iraq and Afghanistan. Together with Paolo Woods and Michel Beuret, he has published China Safari – On the trail of Beijing’s expansion in Africa  (Nation Books, 2009), charting China’s dramatic rise in Africa. Michel has written for Le Temps, l’Hebdo, Le Monde, Geo, NRC Handelsblad, Sole 24 Ore, Internazionale, Aperture, Fortune, Foreign Policy, The Independent and others.

Michel’s last book Marche sur mes yeux, portrait de l’Iran aujourd’hui (Grasset, 2010, with Paolo Woods) is a controversial, in-depth look at Iranian society and recent history.