Will Neal currently works as a reporter covering US politics for The Daily Beast, and internationally as a freelance investigative journalist for publications including The Observer, The i Paper, euronews, New Lines Magazine, Meduza, The New World, Index on Censorship, Coda Story, The New Humanitarian and Byline Times, among others. His short stories have appeared in Chicago’s Hypertext Review, the Anglo-American literary magazine Litro, and Manchester’s Lunate journal.

 

Having previously covered the South Caucasus from Tbilisi, he was expelled from Georgia in May 2025 after exposing sanctioned Kremlin oligarch Roman Abramovich’s secret business ties to the UK company behind Georgia’s largest state-aligned TV channel. The ban was preceded by what Reporters San Frontières described as “a hate campaign led by pro-government politicians and media outlets,” and remains subject to legal appeal.

 

The same year, Will was shortlisted for Amnesty International’s Gaby Rado Award for New Journalist, and was a finalist for the Wallace House Center For Journalists’ Livingston Award in International Reporting. He was also a member of The John Schofield Trust Fellowship programme for 2024, and has received grants and trainings from the Civil Society Foundation (formerly Open Society Georgia Foundation), Transparency International, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, the Rory Peck Trust, The Printing Charity, the Society of Editors and Arts Council England. In 2020, his piece ‘Interdependence’ was shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize.

 

After starting out in refugee aid, bookselling, publishing, film and television, Will trained as a journalist with the UK Press Association while interning at the South London Press, The Sunday Times and VICE News. He has since worked for the Guardian, Global Investigations Review, Metro Newspaper and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, where he contributed to major international collaborative investigations including Suisse Secrets and the European Press Prize-winning Russian Asset Tracker.

 

Will holds a degree in literature from the University of Cambridge and a master’s in philosophy from University College London. He speaks Russian badly, and French worse.