Asia-Pacific Correspondent
Tomasz Augustyniak is a journalist and editor based in Bangkok. He has been an Asia-Pacific correspondent since 2013
Tomasz Augustyniak
Tomasz Augustyniak is a bilingual multimedia journalist with over 17 years of experience, a wide network of contacts and strong background in media studies. He works across print, audio and online news outlets.
He has been based in Asia for over 10 years, initially in New Delhi and Colombo, then in Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Bangkok. He covers primarily Asia-Pacific region, with particular focus on international affairs, business, space industry, science and the media.
Tomasz is the author of the upcoming book of reportage The Realm of the Buddha on post-war Sri Lanka.
Education
Tomasz completed his Master's degree in Journalism and Social Communication at the University of Warsaw (2010) where he specialized in agency and radio journalism and has written a dissertation on North Korean propaganda. He also completed extracurricular courses on the history of ancient Mesopotamia and the history and culture of India.
From 2018 to 2019, he was a Journalist Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Visiting Research Associate at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. He prepared a study on Western expat media professionals in Asian news organisations and their impact on the global practice of journalism.
He co-organized and spoken at events (foreign reporting, global media industry, propaganda) and participated in various seminars, particularly in South Asian Studies at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies.
The story of Tomasz
Hailing from Poland, prior to his move to Asia, Tom worked in print and radio newsrooms in Warsaw. Upon moving to India and then other countries, he was successively a freelance journalist in South Asia, Southeast Asia stringer and then Asia-Pacific correspondent.
As a bilingual journalist, he has reported for top Polish news organisations: Tygodnik Powszechny, Onet, Wirtualna Polska, Interia, Wprost, Polityka and Polish Press Agency (PAP). He is the only Polish correspondent to cover Sri Lanka extensively and the first full-time correspondent at the Polish language media in Southeast Asia.
Tom's stories also featured in a number of internationally recognized titles in English, both print and online, including the Bloomberg Businessweek, Al Jazeera, South China Morning Post, Quartz and The Times of India - the world's largest circulating English daily.
Tomasz has interviewed prominent figures, including former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, the only Indian cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma and former prime minister of Malaysia Mahathir Mohamad.
Tomasz led the reporting of the 2019 Easter bombings in Sri Lanka and the 2022 Sri Lankan anti-government protests at Tygodnik Powszechny weekly. Prior to that he covered Indian general elections in 2014 and 2019 and Indonesia's West Papua independence protests in 2019. Soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced India's human spaceflight programme in 2018, he traveled to the Indian main cosmodrome in Sriharikota and talked to space scientists and engineers in Bangalore.
In 2016, he was presented with the Leopold Unger Award for his reporting.
Skills
Tom's stories have taken him to nearly 20 Asian countries. He is entirely fluent in English and Polish, can hold a conversation in Hindi and knows the basics of Mandarin, Sinhala, Bahasa Melayu and Thai. Unfortunately, he has forgotten most of the German, French and Latin that he learned at high school and university.
His journalistic repertoire extends to crafting feature stories, op-eds, and on-air commentary for TV, radio, and podcasts.
Profound understanding of current global affairs, impeccable news judgment, and deep-rooted experience in fieldwork make Tomasz a sought-after media professional. His multi-platform expertise transcends reporting; he has collaborated with researchers and think tanks.
Collaboration
Do you have a story for me? Would you like to invite me to your event? Or perhaps you need a person deeply acquainted with and broadly connected in South and Southeast Asia? Do not hesitate, drop me a line!