Iain Overton is an investigative journalist and the Executive Director of Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), a UK-based charity that documents and analyses armed violence worldwide. A former BBC and ITN journalist, he has reported from more than two dozen conflict-affected countries, focusing on civilian harm, military accountability, arms flows, and the political economy of violence.
Overton is a co-commissioner of a Lancet inquiry into global gun violence and health and regularly presents research at the United Nations. He sits on multiple expert and advisory bodies related to arms control, public health, and conflict research, and lectures in investigative journalism and human rights reporting at UK universities. He is an Associate Professor of Investigative and Human Rights Journalism at SOAS University of London.
His reporting and analysis have appeared in Byline Times, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, The Independent, GQ, openDemocracy, and elsewhere. He is a long-standing judge for major journalism awards, including the British Press Awards, Amnesty Media Awards, and the Foreign Press Association Awards.
Overton is the author of Gun Baby Gun (Canongate, 2015), a global investigation into gun culture and the international arms trade, and The Price of Paradise (Quercus, 2019), a study of suicide bombing and modern conflict. His work has received a Peabody Award, two Amnesty Awards, a One World Media Award, a Prix Circom, and a BAFTA Scotland, with further nominations from the Royal Television Society and the Foreign Press Association.
