• HOMEPAGE
• ABOUT
• ARCHIVE
• LINKS
• ROBERT BROWN
• CONTACT

Eamonn O’Neill’s Biography

Eamonn O’Neill is an award-winning journalist from Scotland, specialising in investigative articles and documentaries for national and international audiences.

He was born in Scotland in 1967, attended schools in North Lanarkshire, and graduated with Honours in Modern History from Strathclyde University in Glasgow, in 1989.

After graduation, Eamonn wrote his first non-fiction book investigating nuclear tests in the South Pacific in the late 1950s. In early 1990 Eamonn joined Scottish TV to turn this book into an investigative documentary for Channel 4 network TV in the UK. Dispatches: The Truth of Christmas Island was broadcast to critical acclaim in January 1991 and Eamonn’s research prompted questions on the floor of the House of Commons from the Rt. Hon. Jack Ashley MP and calls for a public inquiry into the controversial issues it raised. The film was nominated for a British Academy BAFTA award in 1992.

From 1992 until late 1996 Eamonn worked as a Senior Network Producer of Factual Programmes for the newly-formed Scottish Television Enterprises. His investigative journalism led to more Channel 4 documentaries for strands like Dispatches, Cutting Edge and True Stories. International assignments took across the world, to various corners of Europe and throughout the USA covering topics like miscarriages of justice and US soldiers still listed as ‘MIA’ in Vietnam.

After living and working in the USA for two years, Eamonn returned to Europe to work for GQ magazine and then Esquire magazine, where he remains to date on a freelance basis. Assignments for these publications have included crime, terrorism and international-intelligence issues. Stints also followed with The Scotsman, The Sunday Herald, and recently The Herald newspaper and its award-winning magazine in Glasgow, whilst other investigative projects also saw his work published in almost every UK broadsheet on the newsstands. In broadcasting, Eamonn has also worked on major investigative projects for the BBC in recent years and has been involved – as a journalist, producer and interviewee - in an array of independent network documentary and current-affairs productions too.

Since 2002 Eamonn O’Neill has been a Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow where he teaches undergraduate classes in journalism. Eamonn also taught guest lectures for two years to undergraduates and post-graduates at Napier University in Edinburgh and has given lectures in various institutions in the USA including St. Michael’s College in Vermont and Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. In May 2007 Eamonn was appointed Programme Director of the MSc in Investigative Journalism at the University of Strathclyde.

Eamonn O’Neill’s work has been recognised for major UK awards like the BT Media – Feature Writer of the Year – runner-up/finalist (2002); Runner-up in 2005 for the British Press Awards – Feature Writer of the Year; and that same year, part of The Herald Magazine’s winning team in the British Press Award’s Supplement of the Year category. In October 2005, Eamonn was runner-up in the inaugural Paul Foot Award for Investigative Journalism, the UK’s first major award in this category, which was sponsored by Private Eye magazine and The Guardian newspaper.

For the last decade, Eamonn and his American-artist wife (and their cat Sam) have lived in a small village deep in the countryside, not far from the Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh. He is currently completing his first novel, The Last Court of Appeal.

RECENT ARTICLES